A Part of the Sky (6 page)

“A money crop,” I said, “to keep our farm.”

My shirt was wet with work. Salty sweat was stinging my eyes, so I rested my tall two-handed scythe to rag my face. Seeds stuck to me. Pulling a gray whetstone from a back pocket, I turned the scythe upside down to click a fresh edge on a long curving blade. The sound carried. Another reaper, beyond sight, answered me with his stone, as if to
brag that he was working as hard. It was a sort of summer music, a rhythm, to hear a whetstone strum a scythe.

I continued to mow, inching forward step by step with every sweeping swing. It felt manly to earn money. Ben, because of his injury, wouldn’t be haying as much. He usual offered seven dollars a ton. But that was delivered to his hay barn. Now, without Solomon, I’d have to chop my price to five dollars a ton because his man George would have to come with their oxen and wagon. By then, I’d have it all down, tumbled into straight windrows, and then piled as soon as dry.

As I worked, I remembered last summer. My father was haying beside me. He’d nearly stomped on a nest when a swallow fluttered up to scold. Together, we knelt to locate her four young bird-lets, barely hatched. Fuzz instead of feathers. Papa halted his work, fetched a beanpole, and marked her nesting place, to spare the little miracle that happened in his hay.

“Papa.”

The echo of his name wafted away, and I stood alone in our hayfield with the cut of a memory.

As the June sun was hot in a cloudless sky, the mowed hay behind me was drying. Mama and Aunt Carrie come out with pitchforks to tumble
it. In the kitchen, they talked. But here they spoke little. Hour after hour, they worked silent as men.

At supper that evening, I noticed the tired on their faces. Neither one complained. Perhaps their backs told them that I ached as did they. When we bowed our heads for a Shaker blessing, I saw their hardened hands clenched in grace; they asked for so little, and yet they’d given so much.

“Bless our food,” Mama whispered with her eyes closed, “and us for Thy service, to Kingdom Hall. Amen.”

“Amen,” said Carrie and I.

Supper was beans, boiled eggs, and turnip greens, and milk, given to me by Mrs. Tanner. Soon I’d wring a chicken’s neck, and we’d feast for fair. We ate no beef, no pork, and no mutton.

“Tomorrow,” I told them as I ate, “I’m taking Daisy away. There’s no other answer. Ben says she’ll never again freshen, and he’s raised more cows than I have.”

Mama and Carrie stopped eating.

“Please,” I said, “don’t poke me with questions. It’s for the farm’s good. For us.”

Inside, my mind harped on the threat of our September taxes. My ears still rang with Mr. Gamp’s warning of the money we’d owe.

“Robert,” said Mama, “you’ll act right. We trust. So don’t you fret a mite. Do what needs.”

Aunt Carrie nodded.

Looking at both of them, I said, “You ladies are Vermont granite. There’s not a farm in the county that can boast of two women, or two men, the such of you.”

Mama smiled faintly.

“Yoke us,” she said, “and we’ll pull.”

After supper, while Mama and Aunt Carrie were ragging the kitchen, I went outside. As it was still light, I walked to the hayfield to sweep another swath. In my hands, the scythe seemed heavier, and its edge duller. Hay almost refused to fall. But I reaped until after sundown before returning my cutter to the toolshed, where I wiped clean its blade.

As I passed the henhouse, the chickens were either asleep or in prayer. Nary a peep.

Standing at the meadow fence, I allowed my chin to rest on the butt of a post. How many tons of hay, I wondered, would we glean? Not enough for September. Thirty-five dollars was a fortune. Was Mr. Gamp right? Maybe selling the farm was sound.

“No,” I said, lifting my head.

Daisy must have been listening. Because I saw
her strolling toward me in the moonlight, walking very slowly across the stubby pasture grass.

“Howdy, old girl. I know. You miss old Solomon.”

Do cows think? Standing there, leaning on the fence, I figured Daisy realized that something in her life was different. My twice-a-day visits had ended. More than missing her milk, I missed milking her, feeling all of her hay-burned warmth. And I was hoping that Daisy missed me as much.

It had been a long day.

My eyes felt already asleep. Saying a good-night to Daisy, I trudged up to the gentle knoll to our house. A lantern yellowed our kitchen window. By itself. Mama and Aunt Carrie had crept into bed.

Just as I was inhaling to blow out the kitchen light, Sarah, our cat, came from behind the stove, tail high, to rub against my leg. Bending, I petted her. Then, picking her up into my arms, I held her purring against my face. Miss Sarah was warm and soft. Yet she felt older to me, and thinner.

“Miss Sarah,” I told her, “we still have you, little pet. You’re older than I am.”

For some reason, I lay down on the hard boards of our kitchen floor, allowing Sarah to lie on my chest. Paws primly together, she blinked at me,
closing her eyes with the complete contentment that belongs only to a cat.

“Sarah,” I whispered to her. “Miss Sarah.”

Stroking her, I thought of Daisy, alone out in our meadow night, perhaps longing for Solomon’s company. Animals feel. This I knew. They touch and are touched. Words weren’t no more than extra weight. Friendship took no talking.

Nearly asleep, I tried not to think about tomorrow, or Daisy, or Mr. Clay Sander. As Miss Sarah hopped off my chest, my eyes opened, so I made myself undress, wash, and tumble into bed.

I slept on a tick. A muslin sack, tan as an eggshell, stuffed with dried corn shucks. It allowed a sleeper to smell last summer’s corn all winter, a cozy lullaby for a January night. Curling up on a tick made a rustle of rest. Beneath me, the cradling crackle of tick stuffing whispered me a bedtime story softer than a twilight kiss.

That’s all I remembered.

Early next morning, I led Daisy to Clay Sander’s butchery to cut a business deal with him. As I collected the five dollars in cash, my hand was trembling. I hated the feel of it. Lucky for me, the words
dog meat
never got spoken. Had I heard them, I might’ve turned tail and run away, taking
Daisy with me. Or worse, just leaving her behind.

This, however, was no time to be a coward. Instead, I stayed with her for over an hour because I wouldn’t allow her final moments of life to be among strangers who didn’t care or even know her name.

A man came and tagged her, twisting a wire around the base of her ear. He looked at me.

“Your cow?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Maybe you’d best leave, boy. Because I don’t guess you’ll want to watch. It ain’t pleasant.”

“I’ll stay.”

With a shrug, the man gently punched my shoulder, then left me alone with Daisy. The stink of the place was strong. A death smell. With my arms around her warm neck, I hugged her for a final time, saying “Daisy” to her. She wasn’t easy to hold. Her head fought the rope.

The man returned with another man. Both of them were wearing leather aprons.

“Bring her,” one of them said.

I led her inside, onto a concrete walkway, and they vised her head into a stanchion below a platform. A man climbed the short ladder to stand above her and picked up a sledgehammer.

Daisy kicked, but there was no escape.

As I leaned forward to touch my face to hers, I heard “Back away, boy.”

I obeyed. But I remained near, eyes closed tight, until I heard that dull horrid sound of a sledge bashing her skull under the little curlycue between her eyes. I heard her fall. She was dead.

Only when the men were fastening a heavy chain to one of her hind legs did I leave her. Behind me, the rattle of the chain in its conveyor track grew fainter as I began my lonely walk.

To honor her, on the way home I kept repeating Daisy’s name, hoping somehow, and somewhere green, she was with Solomon.

8

Good news.

I passed English. Only because Becky Lee Tate had, for some odd reason, enjoyed the dance at the Grange Hall, and had coached me. Lucky for me, on Miss Malcolm’s final English test there was only one question on
As You Like It
.

Who wrote it? And I could answer that.

My really pleasant surprise arrived one morning when I was standing between two short rows of dill, and along come Miss Malcolm on the dirt road.

“Robert,” she cried, grunting her weight out of her junky two-seater car, “you rascal, you never came to school to pick up your year-end report card. Even though your attendance record needs improving.”

There I stood, smeared with manure dust, as I’d been pushing wheelbarrows of it to our vegetable garden.

“Did I pass?”

She smiled at me. “Somehow. Even though you and Becky Tate wrote a few mysteriously similar answers.”

When she handed me the card, I first wiped my hands on my pants. “Thanks. Thank you a lot, Miss Malcolm.”

“You’re quite welcome.” She paused. “At school, we teachers are aware of your father’s death, and that now you’re working the farm. We salute your resolution.”

“Well, I’m giving it a go.”

“Please don’t drop out of school. We need you there. You need us. The poem that you handed in …”

“No good?”

“On the contrary. I thought it outstanding. I’m going to copy it and save it at home, in a very special box where I keep important papers. I can’t remember all of it, only the last four lines …

“The farmer was my father.”

“Yes, I guessed as much.” Miss Malcolm’s face turned serious. “Why, when you have talent, did you waste your school time, last October, playing that prank on the shop teacher, Mr. Orr?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You ought to be.” Miss Malcolm stamped her foot. “You and that Jacob Henry deserved a scolding or a spanking, and possibly both. The pair of you are more slippery than wet seeds.”

Looking down at my dirty bare feet, I asked, “How did you find out
we
did it?”

“Word,” said Miss Malcolm, “gets around. Wherever did you boys get that,” she paused, “… that
publication?
”

“From out of the trash can. You know, in the alley behind Rocco’s Barbershop.”

“I hardly spend much time there. Nor do I ever review Mr. Rocco’s reading material.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

Miss Malcolm pointed a finger at me. “Well, a trash can is exactly where those … those shocking girlie-girlie magazines belong. Bad enough that you and Jacob even bothered to flip through them.
But no, you two sneaked one to school. Then, on that downpour of a rainy day, you hid it inside old Mr. Orr’s umbrella.”

“What happened wasn’t really part of the joke.”

“I know what happened! I was there, standing with Miss Johnson and Miss Wickersham in front of the school waiting for the rain to stop. And poor Mr. Orr opened his umbrella. Out that girlie book tumbled, to reveal that … that
photography
.”

“Yes’m.”

“Miss Wickersham is very straitlaced. And I thought she would either scream or faint. She was gasping.”

“Yes’m. I’m sorry. We didn’t count on blushing any of the lady teachers. Honest. Only Mr. Orr.” I scratched myself. “How did he know who did it?”

“Mr. Orr may be aging and deaf, but I assure you, he didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to finger the culprits, because earlier, he had threatened to thrash both you and the Henry boy, and you know why.”

I nodded. “Oh, that was sort of in fun. During woodshop, we nailed his glove, from the inside, to the plank of his workbench.”

“He caught you doing it?”

“Not exactly. But when Pop Orr … excuse me,
I meant Mr. Orr … couldn’t pick up his glove and cussed, the other boys all laughed and looked at Jacob and me.”

Right then, I was praying that Miss Malcolm wouldn’t blame either Jacob or me for what three of the high school guys did. Late one night, they painted a sign, and then hung it over Pop Orr’s front door. The letters were bright red.

Miss Malcolm stared at me. “I’d dread to imagine what goes on inside that brain of yours.”

“Thoughts I don’t write down.”

“Robert, perhaps you
should
write them.” “Yes’m.”

Entering her beat-up car, Miss Malcolm looked at me from behind the wheel. “Write another poem.” She winked at me with a nod of her gray hair.

“I will, Miss Malcolm.”

“Promise?”

“Yes’m.”

“Oh, one more thing. Learn to dance.”

I made a face. “How did you know I couldn’t? I get it. You must’ve served at the Grange Hall that evening, as one of the Percherons.”

“I believe,” said my teacher, “the correct word is
chaperone
. A Percheron is a big heavy horse with hairy ankles.”

I covered my mouth and my giggle.

“Robert, not one word.” She paused. “You never saw me at the Grange; you were too entranced with Miss Tate. By the way, I met her earlier. She’s going to come out here this afternoon.”