Harvest Home (41 page)

I stared at it for a moment, holding it up to the fire. My hand must have been shaking slightly for I saw a small bright shape rippling on the sooty wall next to the fireplace, the tiniest beam reflected back from my hand. I thought it was my wedding ring, but as I dropped that hand, holding the paper in the other, the small shape still remained, like the signal of a tiny heliograph flashing a message. I reversed the paper into the light and discovered what was causing the little ripple on the wall. When I had read the too clear words on this other side I felt a sudden chill, though the fire had warmed the room—the chill that comes not from any drop in body temperature but from those faint warning notes that are sounded in the dim recesses of the mind.

I tucked the scrap of paper in my pocket, and was returning the bone ring to the bag when Mrs. Green came with food for Jack. She stopped, and without greeting stared at me. Hurriedly I retied the string around his neck and slipped the bag inside his shirt. I left quickly. There was still time to get to Soakes’s Lonesome before dark.

Two hours later, when I arrived at the Widow Fortune’s, the small, gabled house looked gloomy and forlorn with the corn patches cut and shocked. The dying sun seemed to draw the fire from the maple leaves, giving the trees that framed the house a dark, foreboding air. Striding past the stubbled yard, I knocked on the door; again there was no reply. I went along the drive, where I found Fred Minerva’s wagon parked near the beehives: two men had just finished loading the wagon with wooden casks of honey mead from the shed. I moved aside as Fred drove the team out, the men dour, silent, granite-eyed, surveying me from the tailgate. Out on the street, Fred pulled up as Mrs. Green came to meet them. She hurried away with one of the casks.

I went down the lane to the barn. Through the open doorway, I could hear the cow knocking her hoofs against the stall, and the rhythmical sound of milk squirting into a tin pail.

The old lady’s long skirts covered the milking stool she sat on; the cow gave me a bland, uninquisitive look as I entered.

“Good evening.”

“That it is.” She glanced at me briefly, then returned her attention to the cow’s teats, two of which she held loosely in her hands.

“Milking time,” I observed.

“Comes ‘round this hour reg’lar as sin. Cow that’s got milk wants to give it,” she replied indifferently, sitting stolid and taciturn.

“How’s Caesar’s Wife?”

“Not above reproach, as Caesar’s Wife should be. But then, who is? Hold still, there, miss or ma’am, or whatever you are. Girl’s edgy tonight.”

“Why?”

“Hard to tell. Folks and beasts alike gets itchy long ‘bout now, when the harvest’s in and the work’s done.”

“And Harvest Home—?”

“Aye. Harvest Home.” She looked up toward the rafters as though to peer beyond the rooftree to the heavens themselves. “Be a full moon, too. They call it the Moon of No Repentance around here.”

I leaned against a joist. “Why’s that?”

“Come harvest you take what there is—too late for repentance.”

I gave her a thin smile. “Another tradition?”

“Certain.”

“I keep hearing about tradition.”

“ ‘Pears some folks don’t hear enough, the way they behave in public.” The regular ping of the white stream hitting the side of the milk pail emphasized the deep undercurrent of her words. “Some folks, it appears, have a mind to meddle where it’s none of their affair, and to scoff where they have no right to scoff. There are some hereabouts who don’t take kindly to a man who makes fun at our ways.

“Your bein‘ an outsider, them old ways is a pretty hard thing for a man to seize on to. Outsiders always had that trouble; take Robert, for instance. He had trouble some years ago; he learned. But hereabouts in Cornwall Coombe we look on the old ways with partic’lar relish. You take a woman, now. A woman is different than a man. There’s things in a woman a man may never understand. Hold still, there, girl.” She rapped the cow’s flank as its tail switched. “Bein’ a man, you ought to think about the fact that there’s things in women you can never understand.”

I eyed her coldly. “What things?”

Her laugh was rough. “You think you know women? You think you know your wife? Think you understand her body, her mind? Her needs? They’re all different than yours, every last one. But because you don’t understand, you have no way but to accept it.”

“Or perish?”

“Maybe. A woman is supposed by most men to be heavenly, but if the truth was known, she ain’t heavenly a’tall. She’s a creature of the earth, she works and loves and lives with her feet firmly planted on the ground, and them that don’t is a sorry lot of dreamers. Look at your city ladies, in their beauty parlors and their lunch places and their shops and their love nests. Are they happy, them and their nail polish?” She released the two teats, wiped her hands on her apron, pressed the bony joints, then stripped the last drops of milk from the cow’s teats. “There may have been a man before there ever was a woman in the Garden of Eden, but the man would have died long ere he did without her. If it weren’t for the women, where would anyone be? Unborn. Just—not livin‘. Just somewhere else in the universe. ’Ceptin‘ the women, you’d have men who’d never know the light or the air or whatever joys God may see fit to bring us.”

“Or the horrors.” I laid an edge to my voice.

“Horrors, too. That’s what comes of bein‘ born of woman. But pity the poor creature for what she longs for and for what she never gets. But longin’, they ought to be given their way. There’s a good old girl,” she told the cow, rising and walking to the doorway where she set down her stool and pail. Ignoring me, she crossed the lane and went into the field, looking off at the empty land. She remained there statue-like, and might-have been carved from an immense quarried rock, a massive and columnar sculpture, dark, brooding, sphinx-like. But this riddle—I could read it now. I did not like her any more; the thought saddened me.

As I came up behind her, I heard her speaking, not to me but to the stubbled furrows.

“ ‘I was born like the maize in the field, like the maize I was cherished in my youth, I came to maturity, I was spent. Now I am withered and I die.’ ” Becoming aware of my presence, without turning, she said, “There’s an epitaph for you. It was an Indian’s.” Her voice sounded heavy, weary as she nodded and said, “Aye, she is a friend to man.” I took a step to her. “Mother Earth?”

Her head turned abruptly; she gave me a long look, searching, as though even now she would be friendly, still would command my respect and understanding. “Yes,” she replied simply. Bending, she scooped up some soil, clenched it before my face, then opened her hand. The form of her palm and fingers remained pressed into the moist loam. “This is her. Look at her.” She took my hand and laid the clod in it. “Feel her. Smell her. She is there, has been, will be, till the end. She is the beginning and the end. Who will deny her? Who can deny her? You have questions? Ask them. Listen to her, she will tell you.”

“What will she tell me?”

“Do not be so scornful. She is all of woman, and more. She bears as a woman bears. She gives and sustains as a woman does, but a woman dies, being mortal. But she is not. She is ever fruitful. She is the Mother.”

I stared at the mounded mass in my palm. “Lay seed in her, she will bear. She will nourish and sustain, and in the sustaining will give forth and provide. And that seed you give her will make another seed, and that another, and another, again and again—forever the Eternal Return.” Slowly her arms rose and straightened, her fists opened, spread broad, an impressive gesture of benevolence, a priestess acknowledging the deity. “Let. us pay her tribute. Let us beg her for her strength and protection. Let us pray that she may bring forth her strong plants, her rich food, her very life. How selfish we are. We give her but a seed, a kernel, a dead thing. Yet see what she returns to us. Such bounty, such riches, such life! What mortal is there who cannot help but wonder at her love her, fear her?

“The Bible says Eve was born of Adam’s rib, but he was born of the earth, so there was woman before there ever was man. She is not merely a mate, a life’s companion, a helpmeet; she is the moving force, the power. And while Adam was abroad in the forest, she was in the fields planting and tilling. What man but a fool will reject the counsels of his spouse, who will give life to his sons? What man will spurn her, not venerate her, she who shares his bed and board, who tends his fire and his cookpot? The Lord preserve the women. The Lord preserve the fruitful Mother. And she will give, and give, and give, till there is no more to be given.”

She took the clod from me, pressed it, and let it crumble and sift between her fingers, the particles falling into the furrow.

“And in the end she will take it all back. There’s the irony. For as a man dies, so does a woman. It is the Mother who must succeed in the end, since everything must return to her. It is the tribute we must pay for her patronage.” She stared down at the crumbled soil, spread it with her toe. “Come Planting Day, she will need even that moiety.”

She turned and went back to the barn, and took up her pail and stool. “I bid you good night,” she said.

“No.” My voice rose sharply. She blinked at me, trying to understand my purpose in coming.

“You’re angry,” she said, a trifle wistfully. “Too bad. I hoped we might’ve been friends. You have something more, then?” I nodded. “Come along, say what you have to say.” She motioned me to close the barn door; then, as I followed her, she made her way to the dooryard where she disposed of the stool and ushered me up the steps.

When she had poured the milk into a crock and put it in the refrigerator, she nodded for me to be seated as she put the kettle on to boil. The lamp she had turned on laid a warm pool of light on the scarred and ringed surface of the wooden table. She washed her hands, and when the kettle began to sing she took it from the stove plate. She brought down the box of Weber’s tea; brewing it, she spoke over her shoulder. “Who shall say, ‘Be like me’? ‘Be like all the others’? If the bull cares to give milk, who shall say him nay? And if folks—folks like me—think about the old ways, who shall say them nay? Who shall say me nay? I have a cow, and if I believe the Mother fattens the plain for Caesar’s Wife to provide me milk, no man’s goin‘ to tell me no.” She brought the cups on their saucers and laid them on the table. “If your wife tells you that it’s because of women and their strength that men survive, who shall tell her no? Not you, if you’re as smart as I think you are.”

Her step as she laid out the tea things was scarcely as spry as I had seen it on other occasions. Her face looked tired, and without that inner spark that usually animated her every word and gesture, and I saw that she was a very old woman. There was pain in her searching look; in back of the hooded eyes lay a question—hers, not mine, a question in answer to my question. She sipped, then took a hank of wool from a basket and began winding the end around her fingers.

“Planting Day? Spring Festival? Midsummer’s Eve? Harvest Home? Certain they’re older than the hills and they’re not like Santy Claus that you stop believin‘ in when you catch your ma hangin’ up stockin’s Christmas Eve. They’re in people’s blood and marrow and hearts and they been there for centuries. You don’t take them things lightly, nor do you laugh nor interfere just because you’ve had too many pulls at the jug. And a man who dares is bound to come to grief.”

Outside, it was dark. The light above the table was a single beacon in the shadowy room. She continued winding the yarn. “Adam delved and Eve span,” she said wearily. Thinking of what I had discovered an hour ago in Soakes’s Lonesome, after leaving jack Stump’s, what I had known I would find, I remained silent, aloof, watchful of her, one hand employing the spoon to stir my cup, the other deep in my jacket pocket.

I knew I would never come to this kitchen again, never sit at her table, never drink her tea. It was, in a way, like the end or an affair: bitter, hopeless, irreparable,.

“Spinning is a woman’s natural work,” I said at last.

“Aye, traditionally.”

“We were speaking of grief. Has Worthy come to grief?”

She bit her lip. Then: “We all come to grief, one time or another.”

“What will happen to him?”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

“Because I’m an outsider? Worthy’s like a son to me.”

“He was a son before he ever met you.”

“He’s a kid! Sixteen! What did he do?”

“He damned the corn!” Her eyes widened. “He damned the crops. That’s a serious business.”

“All he did was run off from something he didn’t want, to find something he did want. Is that so terrible? You never would have found Worthy if—”

“Yes?”

“—if Tamar Penrose hadn’t seen my letters and steamed it open. She told the Constable, who told Mr. Deming. Mr. Deming called you, the night I brought you the sewing machine. You sent him after Worthy.”

“Don’t you go glarin‘ at me, you and them dark Greek looks. Worthy Pettinger knew what he was doin’; he had plenty of time to think it out—all them weeks I sent him ‘round to you, hopin’ he’d come to his senses. He was chosen. He was to be the Young Lord in the play.”