Fields of Home (19 page)

I don’t know where Grandfather found all the auctions, but he went to one every day that week. And he always did it in just the same way. He’d either be in the house or down at the beehives till the mailman came, then he’d drive away as fast as he could go. He brought home two heifer calves, a worn-out mowing machine, and a lot of odds and ends that he piled on the bench in the carriage house. He never came home till dark, he never came near the high field, and we never could tell what he’d be like when he got home. Two evenings, he was as proud and happy as a kitten with its first mouse. The other two, he was cross, snapped and shouted at both Millie and me, and went to bed just as soon as he’d eaten a few bites of supper. Friday night was one of the good ones, and Saturday night was terrible.

When I brought the cows into the tie-up Friday night, it was easy to see that the brindle cow was awfully near to her time. She was lying down in her stanchion, rocking her head, and sort of moaning, and she was a little feverish. After I’d stanchioned the other cows, I got her up, put her in the spare boxstall, and brought her a bucket of water. Grandfather came home just as I was going to the house for the milk pails, and he shouted to me as he turned into the driveway from the road, “By gorry, Ralphie, I fetched us home a tarnal fine trading cow. Got a calf! Heifer! Made a powerful good trade on ’em. How’s the brindle a-doing?”

I didn’t shout back, but waited for him at the corner of the woodshed, and told him I thought the brindle was about ready to calve. Before he’d go to look at her, he wanted me to see the new cow and calf. They were both pretty sad looking. The calf wasn’t more than two or three days old, it was lying out flat on the floor of the spring wagon, and it looked like a bundle of bones done up in a spotted calfskin. The cow looked even worse. There wasn’t enough meat on her to make a good meal for a coyote, she was knock-kneed in front and splay-footed in back. She had narrow horns on a narrow head that hung like a tired camel’s, and her udder looked like a half peck of potatoes in an old cotton bag.

“Gorry, ain’t she the best trading cow ever you seen?” Grandfather asked as he climbed down from the wagon. He didn’t wait long enough that I had to answer, but ran his hand along her hummocky back, and kept right on talking. “Little dite on the thin side, but that ain’t nothing some good provender won’t take care of. Mark the veins along the sides of that bag. Don’t put them kind of veins on there for nothing, Ralphie. Don’t cal’late she’s more’n eight, nine years old. Spunk right up with a little good provender in her. Cal’late she ought to be good for two, three pounds of butter a day. You fetch the calf on down to the sheep barn whilst I put the cow in the tie-up. Gorry sakes! That was a powerful good trade I made!”

When I’d taken the new calf to the sheep barn, unhitched Nell, and taken her to the barn, Grandfather was in the stall with the brindle cow. “Fetch me the lantern! Fetch me the lantern, Ralphie!” he called as I led Nell into the barn. “We got a tarnal sick cow on our hands. Tell Millie to fetch a kettle of hot water and the washbasin. It’s twins a’right, and I cal’late they’re tangled.”

We didn’t have any supper that night. Grandfather was hardly off his knees from the time I brought the lantern. He was as gentle with the cow as a mother would be with a sick baby, but every once in a while he’d snap an order sharply at Millie or me. As he worked over her, he told us the calves would both be either heifers or steers, because they were in the same sack, and that they were going to be born backwards. It was nearly midnight before Grandfather delivered the second steer calf, moved it forward so its mother could lick it, and climbed to his feet. He was so tired that his shoulders slumped forward, but he seemed happy, and as proud as if the two star-faced red calves had been his own babies. “Gorry sakes, children, ain’t they pretty ones?” he asked. Then he straightened up for a minute, and said, “By fire, Ralphie, them’s going to make us a yoke of steers! Come three-year-olds, they’ll fetch a log out of the woods that no team of hosses this side the Androscoggin could budge an inch. Cal’late we’ll need ’em whenst we go to clearing the wilderness field.” He leaned over, patted the cow’s head, and whispered to her, “Your trouble’s all over for this trip. You’ll be fit as a fiddle, come morning.”

20

The Screen Door Bangs

I
’D NEVER
seen a cow that milked any easier than the new one. She didn’t lift a foot or even switch her tail, and the milk came in wide white ribbons until the froth stood high above the top of a twelve-quart pail. Grandfather was almost hugging himself at the good trade he’d made, and all through breakfast Saturday morning, he could only talk about how much butter we were going to have next winter and how big a log the steer calves would be able to pull when they were three years old.

Grandfather was still happy when I went to rake stones in the high field. But when I got there, I was sure he’d been there ahead of me. Along the orchard wall, there was a trail where the dew was knocked off the grass. In the soft ground at the end of the last row I’d raked, there were two marks of a man’s shoes. They were the same size and shape as Grandfather’s, and were within a foot of the rake. The toe marks were much deeper than the heels, so I knew the man had been squatting down and looking at it carefully. If it had been Grandfather, I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t scolded me, or why he’d been so happy at breakfast.

Whatever upset him must have been something that came in the mail. I’d just hauled a load of stones to the orchard wall when Grandfather left the beehives, went to meet the mailman, and then into the house. I had the drag unloaded, and was just straightening up to get the kinks out of my back, when I heard him shouting from the direction of the buildings. At that distance, I couldn’t make out a word he was saying, but I could tell that he was terribly mad. He was standing by Old Nell’s head at the corner of the woodshed, and seemed to be shaking his fist at the summer-kitchen doorway as he shouted. A minute later, Millie stepped into the doorway. Her voice came sharp as she yelled back at Grandfather, but I couldn’t make out one word from another. It lasted three or four minutes. Then Grandfather climbed onto the wagon and drove away at a hard trot.

When I pulled the next load to the wall, I saw Millie coming up the roadway past the side of the orchard. She had a jug in her hand and, from the way she was walking, I knew she was madder than a trapped weasel. She didn’t answer when I called, “Hi, Millie,” and kept her lips pressed tight together till she was right in front of me. Then she held the jug out, and snapped, “Fetched you some switchel! Ain’t going to stay here another cussed day!” She kept right on spluttering while I drank. “What does Thomas think I be; a dog to get hollered at every cussed time he makes a bad trade or gets a letter he don’t like? So tarnation ugly this morning Old Bess can’t even abide him and has hid off under the woodshed. I ain’t going to stand it another blessed day!”

“This switchel’s pretty good,” I told her. “It’s cold, and you seem kind of hot. Let’s go sit in the shade while the colt rests. I’ve kept him on the go all morning.”

“Don’t want to sit down! Don’t want no switchel! I want to know what’s got into Thomas! Sweet as sugar one day, and bitter as gall the next!”

“What’s the matter,” I asked her, “did the brindle cow die?”

“Not yet, but she will devilish quick if ever she kicks me again!”

“What were you trying to milk her for?” I asked. “Her milk won’t be any good for two or three days. Why don’t you let the calves suck her?”

“Can’t suck her! Ain’t a teat on her but it’s growed up with warts till the good Lord Hisself couldn’t milk her.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her.

“’Tain’t the cow! It’s the letters! I want to know what in tunket Thomas is up to! Sneaking mail abouts like a lovesick widow woman! Hmmff! Ain’t no fool like an old fool!” Millie’s eyes squinted and she pinched her mouth up tight. “Don’t cal’late he’s been a-writing to them matermonial papers, do you? Waiting on the mailman, and a-driving toward the Falls like as if the devil was after him! Ain’t you took note he’s been a-meeting the noon train? Good Lord a-living! I got two minds to one to go off and leave him right this blessed minute! I’ll go off to Lewiston and get me a job in the mill.”

The train whistled two long and two short blasts for the Lisbon Falls crossing. The sound came sort of faint and wailing through the woods. Millie jerked one hand up, cupped it around her ear, and said, “Hark! Do you mark that? If Thomas thinks he’s going to fetch some fat old . . . ”

“Oh, you’re crazy, Millie,” I told her.

“Ain’t neither!” she almost cried. “What’s he sneaking around with letters for? Why won’t he eat my victuals no more? Why does he get so cussed mad when I want to get my kitchen screens up? Levi fetched . . . ”

I already had the stones cleared off nearly a fifth of the high field, and had plenty of time, so I said, “You go on back to the house and get dinner ready. I like your victuals, and I’ll quit for the day as soon as I get the rocks hauled from this last row. It’ll take me about an hour. Then I’ll make your screens for you this afternoon.”

Millie was almost running as she went down the hill toward the house, and she must have worked at a run after she got there. When I’d finished and taken the yella colt to the barn, I heard her singing in the kitchen. She’d seen me coming, and had dinner all on the table. “There, by gosh!” she called when I came into the back pantry. “Let Thomas fetch home his widow woman if he wants to! I ain’t going to scrinch and pinchpenny on the victuals no more for him. I killed a young fryer for dinner, and I’m going to kill another one tomorrow. Got a cake in the oven with three eggs in it, too. Let his widow woman try baking with one egg! By the Eternal, I’d like to see how long she’ll live on boiled potatoes and sowbelly! Never have nothing fitting to eat ’cepting when Levi comes!”

The only way I could get the idea of a widow out of Millie’s head was to talk about the screens. She kept telling me over and over that she wanted a spring strong enough to slam the door shut before half the flies in creation could follow a body inside.

With Uncle Levi’s having the lumber for the frames all ripped and planed, making the screens wasn’t a very big job. As I fitted the corner joints, bored holes, and drove the dowel pins, Millie tacked on the screen wire and the molding. All afternoon, she was as nervous and cranky as a setting hen. Every few minutes, she’d go to the carriage-house door and look out to see if Grandfather was coming. And every time I’d have to plane a joint over, she’d yap at me for being too particular. We had to take the hinges off the bran bin in the barn, and we used a knob from one of Uncle Levi’s bench drawers but, at first, we couldn’t find a spring to hold the door shut. It wasn’t until we had them all hung that I thought of using a thin birch sapling.

Grandfather still hadn’t come home when we were all finished, and I tended the door while Millie shooed the flies out of the kitchen. “There, by gosh!” she said, as she stood pulling the new door open and letting the bent sapling slam it to. “Bet you Thomas ain’t a-going to leave that door standing half open! Time he was getting home to his victuals.”

The chores took till way after dark, because the brindle cow was almost impossible to milk. She wouldn’t let her twin calves suck, her teats were so overgrown with warts that I could only get a fine spray of milk from them, and she kicked like an army mule. Millie was holding a fork handle between the brindle’s legs so she wouldn’t kick me off the stool, and I had her about half milked when Grandfather shouted, “Whoa! Whoa, Nell!” from the dooryard. By the time we got to the front barn door, he’d climbed down from the wagon and started for the house. There was moonlight enough to see that he had his arms loaded with what looked to be crocks and tin pans he’d bought at the auction. After one glance, Millie ran toward him, calling, “Wait! Wait, Thomas! I’ll open it for you!”

She was too late. Grandfather scrooched a little, stuck two fingers out from under a crock, and got hold of the knob on the new screen door. He pulled back a few inches, balanced on one foot, and poked the other one into the crack between the door and the jamb. The next second, he kicked the door halfway open, and it slammed back against his armload of crocks and pans. For a minute, it sounded as if a hurricane had struck a peddler’s wagon. Then Grandfather yelled, “
Time and tarnation!
” so loud he could have been heard at Lisbon Falls. Before Millie could stop him, he’d kicked the screen out of the bottom of the door and yanked it off one hinge.

“What in time and tarnation kind of going on is this?” he hollered. “Ain’t been no screen doors on this house in a hundred years, and there ain’t going to be none now!”

Millie was pulling at his arm when I got there, and was yelling till I couldn’t make out a word she was trying to say. Grandfather shoved her away, yanked at the doorframe again, and shouted at me, “Get it out of here! Get it out, I tell you! Don’t let me see no more of your fiddle-faddle contraptions ’round this place. Won’t have it! Won’t have it, I tell you!”

By that time, Millie was crying like a little girl who has just broken her first doll. Her sunbonnet was pushed back off her head, and tears were rolling down her face in streams. She dashed them away with her hands, kicked the pans out of the way, and flung past Grandfather, sobbing, “I won’t . . . stay here . . . another . . . cussed day.”

When I heard the door of her room slam, Grandfather was still shouting after her, “Go off! Go off! Go off, and see if I care!” For a few seconds, I thought he was going to follow her but, instead, he stamped into his own room and slammed the door so hard it made the windows rattle.

I didn’t know just what to do. There wasn’t a thing I could say to Millie that would help. And if I tried to say anything to Grandfather, I’d only make matters worse. I got a screwdriver, and took the broken screen door down. After I’d put it away in the carriage-house attic, I unharnessed and fed Nell, and finished milking the brindle cow. When I started back to the house, Old Bess came slowly out of the woodshed. She knew something was wrong as well as I did, but she had no better idea what to do about it. She licked my hand, looked up at me, and whined questioningly.

The weatherbeaten house was dark both inside and out. In the pale moonlight, it looked as though nobody lived in it, or had for generations. I didn’t want to go in, and sat down on the doorstone, with Old Bess’ head in my lap. I don’t know how long I sat there, just stroking her head and thinking. The shadow of the barn peak had moved nearly across the yard before I got up and went to bed. When I did, I knew what I was going to say to Grandfather if he was still cross in the morning.

Grandfather’s voice was angry when he called me at five o’clock. He was stirring oatmeal into a kettle of steaming water when I came down to the kitchen. He didn’t look up at me, but snapped, “Where’s Millie at?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Isn’t she here?”

“’Course she ain’t here, or I wouldn’t be asking you,” he shouted. “Where’s she at?”

I’d made up my mind the night before that I wouldn’t raise my voice to Grandfather. I didn’t, but I said, “Probably she’s on her way to Lewiston. That’s where I’d be if I were in her place.”

For half a minute, Grandfather stood looking at me as if he didn’t believe he’d heard right. Then he blew off like an overheated boiler. After he’d told me to mind my manners, and had called me every kind of a fool boy he could think of, he began raving about Uncle Levi. He said that, between us, we’d ruined Millie till she wasn’t worth a tarnal whoop, that he was glad she was gone, and that he hoped he’d never see her again. “Who in time and tarnation does Levi think he be?” he shouted. “Writing me letters how to run this place! He never run it, did he? Going off homesteading and leaving me here alone whenst I was sick abed! Come down here and stave the buildings all to smithereens with his fool contraptions! I won’t have it! I won’t have it, I tell you! Father fetched this place out of the wilderness with his bare hands, and, by fire, I ain’t a-going to sit by and see it run back into wilderness with a bunch of newfangled fool contraptions. I won’t have it! I won’t have it, I tell you! Now get out there and go to digging up them rocks with a potato fork like I told you to do it in the first place.”

After planning my speech so carefully the night before, I didn’t intend to leave the kitchen until I’d made it. I tried to keep my voice quiet and steady, but it shook a little when I said, “I think I did you a good job in putting up the hay while you were sick. I spread more dressing while you were gone to the encampment than you thought I could. In four days I’ve taken all the rocks off nearly a fifth of the high field, when you thought the job would take till snow flew. I couldn’t have done any one of those jobs without . . . ”

“Get out of here!” Grandfather shouted, and waved the mixing spoon at me. “Get off this place afore I lose my temper! Get out! Get back to Boston where Levi can spoil you some more!”

After getting that far, I wasn’t going to stop till I’d finished, so, right through Grandfather’s shouting, I kept on, “. . . without contraptions, and most of the time you knew I was using them. That’s why you kept out of sight till Millie and I had the haying all done. I don’t mind hard work, but I won’t do useless jobs the hard way just so I won’t have time to do anything else. And I won’t be yelled at all the time when I haven’t done anything wrong.”

I’d been so busy thinking about what I was going to say that, until I was all through talking, I didn’t realize Grandfather had sent me home. Then I felt sort of silly. I went upstairs, changed my clothes, packed my suitcase, and left.

I heard Grandfather slamming things around in the carriage house as I went out the driveway, but I didn’t look back. I did look in as I went past Littlehale’s, but I didn’t see Annie.