Fields of Home

W
HEN
we moved from Colorado to Massachusetts, at the beginning of 1912, the other children slid into city life as a flock of ducklings into a new pool. I tried as hard as I could to be a city boy, but I didn’t have very good luck. Just little things that would have been all right in Colorado were always getting me into trouble. Out there, after Father died, the sheriff was about the best friend I had. He helped me get jobs with the cattle drovers that went through town, and he always told them I was as dependable as any man. In Medford, the police chief seemed to think just the opposite. Before I’d finished the eighth grade, our house was the first place he came to when anything went wrong in town.

My worst trouble came on graduation day. The night before, one of the boys in my class, who was crazy about cowboys, was waiting when I finished my after-school job in the grocery store. He’d sent away to a mail-order house for a forty-five caliber revolver and a hundred cartridges. He had them with him, and wanted me to go up to the woods and teach him how to shoot. That would have been too dangerous, so I told him he’d have to wait till morning, then we’d go down to the river, and shoot into the water where no one could be hurt.

I knew quite a little about revolvers, and had learned to handle one when I was ten. What I didn’t know was that there was a law against shooting one in Medford, and that bullets skip on water the way stones do. We had skipped nearly fifty of them over into Somerville when the policemen came and arrested us. They kept us at the police station all morning, and the chief said that the only safe place for me was the reform school. Before he let me go, Mother had to promise to send me right away to her father’s farm in Maine.

I took the night boat from Boston to Bath, and rode the twenty miles over to Lisbon Falls on the Lewiston trolley car. Mother had told me that the easiest way to find Grandfather’s farm would be to go up the main street, follow straight ahead for three miles, then turn up the hill road when I came to a big, three-story, brick house.

The few people I passed on the sidewalk seemed to look me over from head to foot, but nobody spoke. I was sure they all knew I’d been sent down there so I wouldn’t have to go to the reform school. I bit my teeth together hard, kept looking at the ground, and walked as fast as I could till I was out of the village. Then I stopped, set my suitcase down, and tried to make up my mind if it wouldn’t be better for me just to run away and go back to Colorado. I’d grown a lot since we’d moved east, would be fifteen in the fall, and knew I could earn a man’s wages on a ranch. If I went back west, I’d be able to send money to Mother every month, people wouldn’t be looking at me as if I were a criminal, and everybody would be a lot better off.

I’d just about made up my mind to go when I heard a rumbling and pounding on the road behind me. A big, skinny, gray horse, hitched to a blue dumpcart, was clumping toward me. At every lumbering step, the box of the dumpcart tipped up a little and bumped down against the shafts. Above the horse’s rump, I could see a battered old straw hat that jounced in time to the bumping of the cart. I didn’t want to be standing there when they went by, so I picked up my suitcase and walked on.

The thumping trot slowed to a walk as the horse came abreast of me, and the man hollered, “Whoa, Etta!” in a sort of gurgly roar. I didn’t want to see or talk to anybody right then but, of course, I had to stop and look up at the man. He was big and round-shouldered. Sitting there on a board across the low sides of the dumpcart, his knees were nearly up to his chin. His overalls were dirty and had a hole in one knee that gray underdrawers showed through. He had squinty blue eyes, a reddish-brown, walrus mustache, and hadn’t shaved for at least a week. As I looked ’round, he spit a mouthful of tobacco juice that just missed my suitcase and plopped into the road dust. “Hot, hain’t it?” he said. “Goin’ to the fourcorners?”

It wasn’t very hot for June, and I didn’t know where the fourcorners might be, so I said, “No, sir.”

“Where be you going?” And he spit again.

From the way he blurted the question, I thought he might be the sheriff, and I didn’t want to get into any more trouble, so I said, “To Mr. Gould’s farm.”

“Tom Gould’s?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get in! I’ll fetch you a piece.”

The horse didn’t move till the man slapped her with the reins and fished on them a few times. For several minutes, he didn’t say a word; just sat there with the reins loose, looking at Etta’s rump, his hands resting across his knees. Then, without looking toward me, he asked, “Who be you?”

“Ralph Moody,” was all I said.

In two or three minutes more, he asked, “Where from?”

“Boston.”

That seemed to interest him. He only waited for Etta to take three or four steps before he said, “Big place, hain’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” I told him.

The farther we went, the less I liked to ride with the man. By the time he’d asked me about Boston, I was sure he wasn’t the sheriff, but I couldn’t just climb down and start walking again, so I sat and planned how I’d go to Colorado. I only had eighty cents, but that didn’t worry me any. It was the beginning of summer, haying time, and I knew I could get plenty of work on farms. There was no hurry. It wouldn’t make any difference if it took me till fall. I wouldn’t really be running away; I’d just be going back where everybody liked me, and where the sheriff was my friend. Mother would know where I was all the time, because I’d work as I went, and would send her money as I earned it. I was just wondering how I’d get across the wide rivers, like the Mississippi, when the man beside me asked, “What you going to Tom’s for? Kin of his’n?”

I didn’t want to answer any more questions than I had to, so I just said, “To work,” and went on thinking about getting across the Mississippi.

For the first time since I’d climbed onto the cart, the man turned his head and looked at me. “What’s Tom paying you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” was all I said.

“Don’t know! Heavens to Betsy! D’you know Tom Gould?”

“No, sir,” I told him. I really didn’t know Grandfather. Mother said I’d seen him when I was three, but all I knew about him was from stories I’d heard her tell. Besides, it didn’t seem to me that it would be a good idea to say I was his grandson when I intended to go right on west without seeing him.

The man swung his head away and spit hard, as though he’d just tasted something bitter. Then he turned back to me, and said, “Well, you will afore the day’s out. Hain’t a meaner man a-living. Skin a louse for hide and tallow!”

I was glad I’d made up my mind to go back to Colorado. Since I’d probably never see Grandfather anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference to me how mean he was, and I wanted to hear what else the man might say about him, so I just said, “Yes?”

“Dang tootin’! So consarn cantankerous there can’t nobody get on with him ’cepting that woman of his’n!” Then he stopped talking, and just sat looking at Etta’s rump for a minute or two.

“I didn’t know there was a woman,” I said.

“Mill Durkin. Housekeeper. Cussed contrary as old Tom hisself. Fight like two stray cats in a rain barrel. Has to stay there. Won’t nobody else put up with her. Gitap, Etta!”

Ahead of us, a three-story brick house came into sight beyond a pine woodlot, and I knew that would be where Grandfather’s road turned off. What I was going to do seemed easy enough from there. I’d say good-bye to this man at the corner, then walk up the side road till he was out of sight, turn into the woods, and go back to the trolley line. But first, I wanted to find out what else he might say about Grandfather, so I asked, “How long has Mrs. Durkin been there?”

“Hain’t Miz Durkin! Mill’s a spinster, ’bout thirty. Been there five, six, seven years, I cal’late. Only help Tom ever had that stayed over two, three days. You won’t, neither. Can’t do nothing to suit him. Work the hide off’n you. Feed you on sowbelly and boiled potatoes. Run his own boys off afore they was growed.”

I thought I’d heard about as much as I wanted to, so I kept still, and went back to planning about going west. We were nearly to the fourcorners when I noticed that the man was looking me over from head to foot. When I looked up at his face, he said, “Might look me up when you get fed up at Tom’s. Name’s Swale. T’other side the brook. Might use a likely looking boy.” He jerked his head to the right, the opposite direction from Grandfather’s, and added, “Don’t need mention it to Tom.”

I didn’t want to hear him talk about Grandfather any more. I knew Mother loved her father and, from stories she’d told us about her girlhood on the old farm, I was sure he couldn’t be half as bad as Mr. Swale said he was. I knew his younger brother, Uncle Levi, too. He was an old bachelor who lived in Boston and he had been out to see us half a dozen times since we’d moved east. Every time he came he’d been loaded down with fruit, nuts, and candy. And I didn’t know a man I liked any better. I reached back for my suitcase, and said, “I’m going to walk.”

Mr. Swale put one dirty hand over on my leg, and said, “Set right still! Set right still! ’Tain’t no load at all on Etta. These hills is powerful steep for lugging a heavy valise. Hot this morning, hain’t it?”

That time I just said, “Yes,” without any “sir” on it, and moved my leg away a little. Then I tried to think some more about how I’d go to Colorado, but I couldn’t seem to get Grandfather out of my head. The next thing I knew, I was remembering things Mother had told us about him; that he was born when his father was seventy-three, had gone to the Civil War before he was twenty-one; had contracted malaria in a Confederate prison and had never got over it. Before I thought, I’d said, “Mr. Gould isn’t very well, is he?”

“That’s depending,” Mr. Swale snickered. “Tom Gould can histe a bull out of a well if he’s hard put or showing off, but he’s too puny to fetch a pail of water if there’s somebody else about that he can shrink it off onto.” Then he bellowed, “Mornin’, Miz Littlehale.”

I’d been so busy thinking that I hadn’t paid much attention to the road or the scenery. I did know that we’d passed a couple of houses since we’d turned off from the main road but, if anyone had asked me, I couldn’t have told them what either of them looked like. It wasn’t until Mr. Swale hollered that I noticed a woman putting a letter into the mailbox at the house fifty yards ahead of us. Except that she was short and sort of fat, I couldn’t tell what she looked like, because she had on a sunbonnet that came way out beyond her face. She didn’t look up until she’d taken a newspaper out of the box and held it up in front of the bonnet for a minute. Then she turned, and called, “Morning, ’Bijah. What brings you up this way?” Her face and voice seemed to go exactly with her body. They were both round, and sort of mellow, but hearty. I liked her from the moment she spoke.

We were getting pretty close, but Mr. Swale’s voice was still loud enough to have been heard for half a mile. “The old woman’s been a-hankering for a setting of them Rhode Island Red eggs of your’n,” he shouted. “Fetched this hired hand up to Tom Gould, and cal’lated I’d just stop and dicker with you for a setting of them eggs. This late of the season I don’t allow you’re holding ’em too dear. Whoa, Etta!”

Instead of answering Mr. Swale about the price of eggs, Mrs. Littlehale looked at me, and said, “Why, he’s just a young boy.” If it hadn’t been for the sound of her voice, I wouldn’t have liked it, but she didn’t even give me time to think about that. She looked right into my eyes and said, “I do hope you’ll stay with Mr. Gould till he gets his hay in. Poor old man; him and Millie up there trying to do it all alone.” Then she turned to Mr. Swale, and said, “Three men he’s had up there in the last week, and not one of ’em worth shucks. Ain’t one of ’em stayed more’n a single day.”

Mr. Swale’s elbow poked me in the ribs as I reached back for my suitcase. He half snickered, and said, “So I was just a-telling the boy here. Dang shame, hain’t it?”

I jumped from the dumpcart, swung my suitcase down, and started to walk up the road. For some reason, a lump had come up in my throat and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I’d only gone a dozen steps when Mrs. Littlehale called, “Son,” so I had to stop. She walked up beside me, and her voice barely came out of her sunbonnet as she said, “Don’t let Mr. Gould rile you. He’s good hearted, and his bark’s a sight worse than his bite. I do hope you’ll stay with him through haying.”

I just tipped my cap, and said, “I will.” Then I went on up the road.

After a dozen more steps, Mr. Swale shouted, “Mind what I was a-saying to you. Name’s Swale; t’other side the fourcorners,” but I didn’t look back.

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