Fields of Home (6 page)

Just at that moment Millie called to us, “Victuals is ready!”

After breakfast, I harnessed the horses while Grandfather was doing something down at the beehives. I hoped he’d stay there till I had time to tighten the nuts on the mowing machine and give it a good oiling, but he didn’t. He came to the carriage house doorway when I was hunting through the litter on the workbench. “What in thunderation you dawdling ’round there for whenst there’s haying to be done?” he shouted.

“I was just looking for some wrenches and an oil can,” I told him. “That mowing machine sounds as if it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Ain’t nothing the matter with it that ain’t the matter with all the pesky things,” Grandfather snapped. “Now come take care of Old Nell whilst I hitch up the yella colt!”

As we led the horses over to the machine, I told myself I’d keep my mouth shut even if I could see that the whole shebang was going to explode with the first turn of the wheel. I didn’t do it, though. The bolt on the keeper at the end of the pitman rod was so loose that the sickle head had a half-inch play. I’d heard it hammering the day before, and knew that if it wasn’t tightened it would break the ball joint off. The yella colt was prancing, bobbing his head, and kicking as Grandfather dodged in and out trying to fasten his traces. As soon as I had Old Nell hitched, I picked up a sharp stone and began tapping the keeper nut tighter. “What in time be you playing with now?” Grandfather shouted at me.

“I’m not playing,” I said. “I’m just trying to tighten this bolt enough that the sickle head won’t break.”

“Leave be! Leave be, I tell you! First thing you know you’ll have it all busted to smithereens. Hold the yella colt whilst I gather up the reins and get along. Time flies!”

Time wasn’t all that flew. Grandfather had just yelled, “Gitap! Gitap!” and the yella colt had taken two jackrabbit jumps when wet grass clogged the cutter bar and the loose pitman keeper jerked the head off the sickle.

“Worthless, useless, meddlesome, big-headed boy!” Grandfather howled. “Now look what you done! Busted it all to smithereens! What in time and tarnation ails you?”

I opened my mouth to yell back, but bit my teeth together and started for the tree where I’d been mowing. “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie,” Grandfather called after me. “Didn’t cal’late to scold you. Tarnal thing keeps a-busting all the time and likes to drive me to distraction. Guess I and you’d better fetch it in to the carriage house and tinker it up a mite.”

The tinkering took us all the rest of the forenoon. Grandfather blew off at me a dozen times for wanting to be too fussy, but he let me put in new knife sections to replace the broken ones, turn the grindstone while he half sharpened the rest of them, put a new head on the sickle, and tighten most of the bearings. As soon as we’d eaten dinner, he went down to the beehives and seemed to have forgotten all about haying. I sawed wood ten or fifteen minutes while I was waiting for him, then bridled the horses, hitched them to the mowing machine, and drove to the orchard.

It was the middle of the afternoon before I saw Grandfather again. By that time, I’d made a dozen rounds of the orchard, and the old machine had worked pretty well. I’d had a little trouble with the yella colt at first, but it hadn’t amounted to much. He’d danced and pranced until he found that I wasn’t paying any attention to him, and then he balked. It only lasted a minute or two. After I’d wired his ears together good and tight with a piece of soft wire, he’d stood, slatting around and bobbing his head. I gave him just time enough to forget he was balking, then picked up the lines, clucked to him, and he walked on, bobbing his head and snorting a little.

Grandfather didn’t come near us when he came into the field. He took the scythe I’d been using from a limb of the apple tree, looked at the blade, and went to the carriage house. It was nearly an hour before he came back. Then he went to mowing under the trees as though he were all alone in the orchard. The sun was dipping down behind the tops of the pines on the ridge when he called to me, “Take the hosses in and fetch your cows. Victuals’ll be ready afore long.”

Grandfather went to sleep at the supper table again that night, and Millie let me do the chores by myself.

7

Uncle Levi

I
T TOOK
me a day and a half to finish mowing the orchard, and I had a good time doing it. The mowing machine didn’t give me much trouble, and the yella colt only balked twice. Both times, Grandfather was away from the field, and the old horse hated having his ears wired so much that neither of his balky spells lasted more than a few minutes. Grandfather didn’t come near the machine once while I was mowing. He spent about half his time away from the orchard, but every time I saw him he was swinging a scythe as fast as he could go.

My second afternoon was bad. Grandfather gave me a right-handed snath and scythe, and made me mow under the apple trees with him. I’d always been left-handed, the same as he was, and couldn’t make the right-handed scythe come within a foot of going where I wanted it to. I tried hard enough that I got water blisters on both hands, but I couldn’t keep the blade from bumping into rocks. Grandfather scolded at me all afternoon, and the more he scolded the worse I did. When the sun was nearly down to the top of the pines, he shouted, “Hang up that snath and scythe and go fetch the cows! Never seen such an awkward, useless boy in all the days of my life.”

I was so mad when I brought the cows in that I made up my mind to go back to Colorado just as soon as I could get my suitcase packed. I banged the stanchion bars around the last cow’s neck, stuck the hold-peg in place, and was turning toward the tie-up door when, from just outside, Millie called, “Hurry up, Ralphie! Supper’s on the fire and Levi’s here. I done all the rest of the chores a’ready.” Then she turned and ran back to the house like a little girl.

When I went into the back pantry I’d have known Uncle Levi was there, even if no one had told me and I couldn’t hear his voice. The table was stacked with big paper bags and bundles. Oranges were spilling out of one bag that was lying on its side. From the shape of another, I knew it was crammed full of bananas and, beside half a dozen smaller bags, there were two big bundles in slick brown paper that I knew would be meat.

“Hi there, Ralphie!” he called to me from the kitchen as soon as I had my cap off. “How’s Thomas using you?”

I couldn’t say anything except, “All right. I didn’t know you were coming down.”

“Didn’t know it myself,” he called back, “till I got Thomas’s letter making out like he was on the point of death. Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder you ain’t scared ten years off my life! How many times, right in the midst of haying, have you wrote and let on like you was dying?”

“Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t been feeling up to scratch for more’n a month,” Grandfather snapped at him.

“Looking pert as a peacock to me,” Uncle Levi told him. “Don’t calc’late there’s nothing wrong with you that a little good meat to eat and a little help in haying won’t fix. Didn’t know Ralphie was down here. Ain’t he considerable help to you?”

“Hmfff! Ain’t no more of a farmer than you be! Swings a snath and scythe like it was a flail swingle! Wants to fritter away all his time ’round the carriage house tinkering up machinery! By fire! I never seen a boy that thought he knowed so tarnal much and could do so little. Telling me to plant strawb’ries and tomatoes! Hmfff! Take a man a year to learn him you can’t cut stone with a scythe!”

With Grandfather talking that way about me, I didn’t want to go into the kitchen, so I pumped a panful of water and was all ready to wash my hands when Uncle Levi came out into the back pantry. The first thing he did was to reach out to shake hands, and said, “Thomas don’t think nobody’s a farmer lest he can swing a scythe.”

The blisters on my hand hurt when Uncle Levi squeezed it, and I guess I winced just a little. He turned my hand over and looked at it. Then he reached for the other one and looked at it too. “Thomas, what in God’s world you been doing with this boy?” he asked sharply.

“Ain’t been doing nothing ’cepting to try to learn him how to swing a snath and scythe,” Grandfather snapped back.

“Why ain’t you put gloves on him? His hands looks like two hunks of half et dog meat.”

“Ain’t going to have no lily fingered fiddler ’round here! Ain’t nothing the matter with them hands that time and work won’t cure. Did ever you see a decent dirt farmer wearing gloves?”

I didn’t want to hear them wrangling the very first night Uncle Levi was there, so I said, “They’ll be all right just as soon as . . . ” but Uncle Levi cut me off.

“Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder . . . ” He stopped right there, dropped my hands, and went back into the kitchen. Millie had just put a big slab of steak into the red-hot iron frying pan, and it spluttered and hissed so loud that I didn’t hear what Uncle Levi was saying to Grandfather.

They kept wrangling all the time I was washing my face and hands and combing my hair, but they didn’t shout as much as they had been. Once I heard Grandfather holler, “Mary sent him down here to be made a man out of and, by thunder, I callate on making him one.”

“Just like you done with Frankie,” Uncle Levi shouted back. “First thing you know he’ll be gone off somewheres to learn a trade.”

For a minute, I thought I’d go in and tell them they didn’t need to worry, because I was going away right then, but Millie called, “Victuals is ready!” And the steak did smell awfully good.

Millie didn’t act at all as she had for the past three days. She had on a pink calico dress that was starched so stiff it could have stood alone, and was as happy as if she were at her own birthday party. As soon as the steak was on the platter, she whisked half a dozen big baked potatoes and a pan of hot biscuits out of the oven, brought a jar of wild strawberry jam from the cellarway, and said, “Sit right down here by the window, Levi. It’s a sight for sore eyes to see you down here again. Thomas, he’s been feeling poorly since spring. It’ll do him a sight of good to have you here for a spell. Don’t know when ever I seen a piece of yard goods as pretty as that you fetched me.”

“Ain’t nothing! Ain’t nothing,” Uncle Levi grumbled as he pulled his chair up to the table. “Scared something terrible might be the matter with Thomas, and didn’t have time to do much shopping. Ralphie, didn’t know you was here or I’d have fetched you something.”

Grandfather didn’t seem a bit hungry when we first sat down at the table. He only took a little corner of steak onto his plate and then kept pushing it around with his knife and fork. Millie scolded at him a bit for not eating, then got a cushion and put it behind his back. She scooped out half a baked potato onto his plate, put gravy from the steak platter on it, and spooned him out some of the strawberry jam, but he still only ate a mouthful or two. After a few minutes, she looked up at Uncle Levi, and said, “Levi, you got any medicine upstairs in your valise?”

She hardly had the words out of her mouth when Grandfather shouted, “Ain’t nothing the matter with me! Don’t need it! Don’t need the tarnal stuff, I tell you! I ain’t sick and I ain’t tired! I just ain’t hungry, that’s all.”

Neither of them paid a bit of attention to Grandfather. Uncle Levi was in his stockinged feet, and had them up on the little shelf under the table. He let them drop to the floor, pushed his chair back, and said, “Wouldn’t surprise me none if there might be a drop or two up there.” Then, while Millie unlaced Grandfather’s boots and pulled them off, Uncle Levi went padding up the front stairs. I heard a board or two squeak in the chamber where I’d been sleeping and, in a couple of minutes, he came back with a half-empty quart bottle in his hand. There was a broken green sticker over the cork, and a picture of a crow on the label.

Grandfather watched, but he didn’t say anything while Millie measured a teaspoon of the whiskey into the glass, put in a heaping spoonful of sugar, and filled the glass with hot water. It smelled good when she set it beside Grandfather’s plate. He wrinkled up his nose a little, and grumbled, “Don’t need the tarnal stuff! Ain’t sick!” But he picked the glass up, and lifted his eyebrows high as he slooped a little sip from the glass.

Millie hadn’t given the bottle back to Uncle Levi, but he walked around the table and picked it up. Before he put the cork back in, he turned the bottle up and took a big, long swallow. A couple of dozen little air bubbles went dancing up through the red liquor. He didn’t raise his eyebrows the way Grandfather had, but when he took the bottle down he shut his eyes tight and shook his head like a horse with a fly in its ear. Then he took the bottle back upstairs.

While he was gone, Grandfather kept telling me what wicked stuff whiskey was, that the Almighty never planned it for anything but medicine, and where people went who drank it just for fun the way Uncle Levi did. But he kept sipping, too, and smacked his lips after every sip. When it was all gone, he cut himself a piece of steak bigger than the one I had, and he ate it all.

I did the milking and fed the calf while Millie was washing the supper dishes. When I came back into the house Grandfather was dozing at the kitchen table, Old Bess was sitting with her head in his lap, and Uncle Levi was asleep in the high backed rocking chair. He had his feet up on the hot-water tank at the back of the stove, and the magazine he’d been reading had fallen on his chest. Millie strained the milk and put it away while I was blowing out the lantern and washing my hands. Then she scrubbed her hands until I thought she’d peel the skin off them. She didn’t say a word to me until she’d gone to her room, brought out a long flat bolt of checkered gingham, and stood, with the pantry windowpane for a mirror, shaping the end of the cloth over her shoulders and around her neck. “Pretty, ain’t it?” she asked at last in a low whisper. “Levi don’t never come down, he don’t fetch me something pretty.”

“Does he come very often?” I whispered back.

“No telling when he’ll come or when he’ll go. Comes when Thomas is down sick—or when he makes him think so. Goes when they get to squabbling so devilish hard they can’t abide one another no longer. Sometimes Levi has to go off back to Boston when he’s got a job of work to do. Brick mason. Devilish good one I hear tell. Only man roundabouts can put the linings in glass furnaces.”

As she whispered, she wound the checkered gingham back on the flat spool, folded the paper around it, tucked it under her arm, and held both hands out toward me. “Let’s see them hands,” she said. She took both my hands in hers and turned the palms up toward the lamp. “Devilish sore, ain’t they?” she asked. “Why didn’t you let on sooner?”

“I didn’t let on at all,” I told her. “Uncle Levi just happened to notice them when we shook hands.”

“Levi notices lots of things a body wouldn’t count on.”

“They’re all right,” I said. “They’ll toughen up when I soak them in salt water.”

“And saleratus. Helps to keep the salt from burning so devilish bad. Sit down at the table while I fix you some.”

Grandfather woke up when I sat down at the table. It was a warm night and, though the wood had burned out, the stove had quite a little heat left in it. I’d have wanted to sit near an open window, but Grandfather opened the oven door, drew the other rocking chair up close, and put both feet into the oven. Then, as he rocked the chair back and forth, he began to tell me about the time the lightning had struck the big barn in the middle of the night and burned it flat to the ground. Uncle Levi was still asleep in the high-backed rocker and, for a few sentences, Grandfather talked above the drone of his snoring. Then his head nodded forward and he was asleep too.

Millie brought the washbasin, half filled with warm water, salt, and soda. As she set it in front of me, she whispered, “Soak ’em good now. I’m going off to bed. You take the corner chamber, next beyond Levi’s. It’s all ready, and ain’t been slept in since I filled the tick anew last husking time. Lamps is filled and ready there on the mantel. Take care Thomas is awake enough so’s he don’t drop his lamp on the way to bed.”

Millie slept downstairs in the parlor, and Grandfather had his room in the other front corner of the house, just off the dining room and next to the parlor. When I’d put my hands to soak, she took the lamp from the pantry, went first to Grandfather’s room, and then I heard her moving quietly in the parlor.

After a few minutes, Grandfather’s head came up a little way, and he began talking about the fire again. He was still more asleep than awake. His voice was soft, and the words came in little gusts, like the sound of a summer breeze blowing through dry grass. “’Twa’n’t long after Frankie . . . Portland . . . learn a trade. Not a critter saved . . . Old Hannibal . . . bellered something awful. Twenty-odd feet shorter’n the big barn.” His head jerked right up straight for a minute. He looked over at me, and said, “One day I and you’ll build the piece back onto it, Ralphie.” He spoke loud enough that he woke Uncle Levi but in another minute they were both snoring again.

The salt water made my hands sting to beat the band for a little while, and every muscle in my body ached, but I was awfully tired. The next thing I knew, Grandfather was shouting, “Levi! Ralphie!”

I must have been sleeping there for a couple of hours, with my hands soaking in the pan and my head resting on the edge of the table. When I opened my eyes, the moon had moved around so it was coming in the south window. Grandfather was yawning and rubbing his bald spot. “Gorry sakes alive,” he yawned, “I must have nodded off a minute or two. Come, Levi! It’s time all honest folks was abed.”

Grandfather was more awake than any of us, so I didn’t worry about his carrying his lamp, but lighted two from the mantel and went upstairs with Uncle Levi. His eyes were still only half open when I picked up my suitcase from beside his bed and went on to the next room.

I had just crawled into bed when Uncle Levi pushed open the door between our rooms. He had undressed down to his long underwear, and had a little round nightcap on his head. He had his lamp in his hand, and peered at me from under his eyebrows as though he were looking over the top of glasses. “Sleep tight, boy,” he whispered. “Watch out Thomas don’t work the tail off you.” Then he went back into his own room.