Fields of Home (9 page)

I was three or four inches taller than Uncle Levi, and I didn’t like being called Ralphie. I couldn’t come right out and say so, but I thought that gave me a pretty good chance to drop a little hint, so I said, “I’m fourteen and a half now, but I guess Grandfather thinks I’m still a little boy. He always calls me Ralphie.” Then I picked up my handsweep and swung it, just as near as I could, the way Uncle Levi was doing.

He stopped raking as soon as I had started, and stood, leaning on the handle of his sweep and watching me. “Hmmm, hmmm, you’re lucky,” he grumbled. “Storekeeper told Father he’d give me a suit of clothes when I growed up if they’d name me Levi. I been wearing the cussed name for sixty-four years, but I never did get the suit of clothes.” A couple of minutes later, he said, “Getting the hang of that sweep pretty good, ain’t you, Ralph? It’s slow and easy does it.”

“Well, it’s still kind of awkward,” I said, “but I guess I can get it; it’s the scythe that I can’t learn to use.”

“Don’t know ’bout that,” Uncle Levi told me. “’Pears to me you could learn most anything you had a mind to. That is, if you didn’t rare into it too hard. S’posing you let me see you try it.”

On my first swing, the blade tangled in the grass and jerked to a stop. “I could do it better with the left-handed scythe,” I said. “I’ve always been left-handed.”

“Got to learn, either way,” Uncle Levi told me. “Might just as well learn right-handed in the first place. There’s a devilish lot more right-handed scythes in the world than there is left-handed ones. Devilish lot more right-handed people, too. Ain’t never a bad idea to learn to do things the way most other folks does ’em. Leave me have hold of that cussed thing a minute.”

I stood back and watched while Uncle Levi mowed a strip ten or twelve feet long. “Take note that you don’t hold the snath so’s the scythe is straight out from you like the row of teeth on a handsweep. Keep the point of the blade close in to you all the while. Leave your wrists go a trifle loose and it won’t histe up so much on the ends of the swing. I ain’t good at this myself, but sometime you watch Thomas—when he ain’t out to set you a pace. Father bent him a little snath and learned him to mow afore he was belly-high to a bull. Ain’t many men can best Thomas at anything Father learnt him to do. Now you try your hand at it a spell.”

Uncle Levi never told me I was awkward, and he never scolded. He just followed along beside me for ten or fifteen minutes, and showed me where I was making mistakes. “Don’t reach too far neither way. Get your tail end around towards the sun, so’s you can keep an eye on that shadow and watch that your head don’t swing. Don’t try to hold your behind still; let it travel as much as it’s a mind to. Turn that right hand down, so’s you can only see the knuckles as it goes apast in front of you. That holds the point down and keeps the stubble even. Roll your right thumb up when you want to histe the blade over a rock. You’re trying too hard. Ease up a dite, and fetch it across with a limber wrist. There! That’s more like it! Take note how the scythe point is hugging along the ground. By hub, you got the trick of it now, Ralph.”

I still couldn’t mow anything like the way Grandfather and Uncle Levi could, but the scythe didn’t get stuck any more, and I wasn’t hitting the stones. “Cut them hogs in the barn cellar an armful of clover every night, and ’twon’t be long afore you can swing a scythe as good as any man,” Uncle Levi told me. “We better get back to raking now. First thing we know, we’ll have Thomas over here raising ructions. Like as not, the way he started off, he’s mowed under half a dozen trees by now.”

Grandfather had finished mowing under his fourth tree when we went back to our rakes, but he was nowhere in sight. His handsweep was still in the corner of the orchard, where he’d dropped it, and his scythe was laid up on the stonewall by the gateway. “Never seen a man just like Thomas,” Uncle Levi said, as he picked up his sweep. “Works in fits and starts. Rares into it like a gale of wind for half, maybe three quarters of an hour. Then he’s off to tend the bees or look what’s come in the mailbox. He’ll be here and gone half a dozen times afore the day’s over.”

Uncle Levi was just right about Grandfather. We never saw him leave but, two or three times, we saw him coming back across the field from the barn. He’d pick up his scythe, mow under three or four more trees, and then disappear. Twice, he stopped by a tree where we were working and, both times, he told me we’d never get finished till snow flew if I didn’t stop my dawdling.

Each time, as soon as Grandfather had left us, Uncle Levi told me that slow and steady went far in a day. And by the time the sun dipped down behind the pine woods on the ridge, we’d finished raking under the last tree in the orchard.

At supper time, it was easy to see that Grandfather was pretty well tired out. We had red flannel hash: potatoes, beets, carrots, and cabbage chopped up with the corned beef that was left from dinner and fried till it was dark reddish-brown on both sides. Grandfather took just a little dab on his plate, and he only ate a mouthful or two until Uncle Levi brought his bottle and Millie made a hot toddy. He grumbled about not needing it, the same as he had the night before, but he took it, and he ate a pretty good supper afterwards.

When I came in from milking, Grandfather had his feet in the oven, and Uncle Levi was reading the Lewiston Sunday paper. He had his glasses balanced on the end of his nose, and was leaning back in his rocker, with both feet up on the hot-water tank of the stove. Grandfather was nodding, half asleep, when I took the sports page of the paper and sat down at the kitchen table to read it. Uncle Levi kept interrupting every few minutes. At first, it was something about somebody’s funeral, or a baby being born, or about a horse running away. Then, as he turned the pages over, it was ads for things people wanted to sell: a live goose featherbed, a chest of drawers, or a two-row cultivator. After each of the first few items, Grandfather would say, “Too bad, ain’t it?” or “Who be they; never heard tell of ’em.” But, after a while, his head didn’t even bob and, every now and then, he’d snore a few notes.

I’d stopped hearing the stuff myself until, suddenly, Uncle Levi asked in a good loud voice, “What kind of bees is blackbelts, Thomas?”

Grandfather’s head came up with a snap. “Blackbelts? Blackbelts?” he said. “Best tarnal bee there is! What about ’em?”

“Oh, nothing,” Uncle Levi told him, as he turned the page, “just seen an ad here where somebody wants to trade off a couple of colonies of ’em for a heifer calf. Don’t calc’late they could amount to much if he’d trade ’em for a heifer calf.”

“Where does he live at? Leave me see that paper!” Grandfather snapped, and pulled his feet out of the oven.

“Way off t’other side of Lewiston,” Uncle Levi told him, and went right on looking at the paper. “’Tain’t worth looking at, Thomas. Take a man three–four hours to drive over there and like as not, he’d find the bees was traded off afore he got there.”

“Pass me that paper! Pass me that paper, Levi! Where in time and tarnation did I leave my spectacles?”

I got Grandfather’s glasses from the mantel. As I gave them to him Uncle Levi passed over the paper. One of his eyelids flickered just a trifle as he looked past my face.

Grandfather buried his head in the outstretched paper for a minute or two, then glanced up at the clock, and said, “Gorry sakes alive! Time flies! Come on, Levi, it’s time all honest folks was abed.”

10

Slow and Easy Goes Far in a Day

I
’D EXPECTED
that we might sleep a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but Millie came in and woke me before it was hardly light enough to see across my room. She was in her stockinged feet, and didn’t call me, but shook me a little by the shoulder. “Get up! Get up, Ralphie,” she whispered when I opened my eyes. “Thomas wants you, but he don’t want Levi woke up. Victuals is almost on the table.” Then she tiptoed out through Uncle Levi’s room without even making a floor board squeak.

I pulled my overalls, socks, and shirt on, took my shoes in my hand, and sneaked quietly out through Uncle Levi’s room. Grandfather was already at the table. He had a pretty good-looking felt hat and a gray suit on, and was eating a bowl of oatmeal as fast as he could swing the spoon.

“Get your victuals into you just as fast as you can, Ralphie,” he told me when I came into the kitchen. “I got to go right off to Lewiston this morning, and there ain’t no time for dawdling over the victuals. I give Old Nell her provender a’ready, and I’ll have her harnessed by the time you get to the barn.” He pushed his chair back, got up, and, as he went out through the back pantry, called, “Fetch a stout piece of rope out of the carriage house whenst you go past.”

Grandfather was in a dither when I got to the barn. He had the harness nearly on Old Nell and, the minute I came into the doorway, snapped, “Stir your stivvers! Stir your stivvers, Ralphie! Fetch Marthy’s heifer calf out and load it on the spring wagon. Who in time and tarnation has been meddling with this tarnal harness? It’s all tangled up.”

Martha’s calf was pretty good sized. It weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds, and it didn’t want to leave Martha. But I’d had quite a little experience with calves in Colorado. I tossed a loop of the rope around the base of the calf’s tail, put an arm around her neck, and started to lead her out to the wagon. Everything would have been all right if Grandfather hadn’t come to help me. He slammed the tie-up door back into my face just as I was putting a hand up to open it. I was leaning over a little to keep my arm around the calf’s neck, and my head was sticking out in front—sort of like a turtle’s. When the door hit me, I lost my balance, but I held onto the calf tight, and we both went down together. “What in time and tarnation you trying to do with that calf?” Grandfather shouted at me from the doorway. “Get up! Get up and leave her alone, I tell you! What you think this is; a wild West show? Turn her loose, I tell you!”

I didn’t have to turn the calf loose. She jerked her head out from under me, scrambled to her feet, and raced off down the tie-up, bawling. Grandfather didn’t bother with me any more, but went running after the calf. “Catch her! Catch her! Head her off!” he was shouting before I was hardly back on my feet. The more he hollered, the more he frightened the calf. She ducked in and out among the stanchioned cows like a cat having a fit. Every cow in the barn had started bellowing, the calf was bawling, and, above the hubbub, I could hear Grandfather yelling, “Tarnal fool boy! Don’t stand there gawking! Help me catch her! We ain’t got all day, I tell you!”

After two steeplechases around the tie-up, the calf stuck her head between old Martha’s hind legs, slipped, and fell into the scupper. Before she could get up, I was on top of her. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her, Ralphie,” Grandfather was saying as he came running over. “Handle her gentle. You got her half scairt to death a’ready. Leave us histe her up careful and fetch her out to the wagon.”

We might as well have tried to carry a full-grown cow as that frightened calf. And besides, she was sort of slippery from falling into the scupper. Grandfather wouldn’t let me hog-tie her, and he wouldn’t even twist her tail a little, so she wouldn’t hang back when I tried to lead her. It was nearly half an hour before we had her boosted into the wagon. We were both pretty well messed up, and Grandfather had called me a tarnal fool boy at least a dozen times. I was so mad when he drove out of the yard that I wanted to throw something after him. I was still mad when I went into the house for the milk bucket. I didn’t say a word to Millie; just grabbed the bucket in one hand, the swill pail in the other, and went out to do the morning chores.

Uncle Levi was downstairs when I carried the milk to the house, and he was as happy as a meadow lark. He had on one of Millie’s aprons over his overalls and, as he cut oranges and bananas into a bowl at the pantry table, was singing, “Around and ’round the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel.” Every time he’d come to, “POP! goes the weasel,” he’d throw a banana or an orange peel at the empty swill pail. Millie seemed just about as happy as Uncle Levi. She was at the stove, frying eggs and watching a pan of biscuits in the oven. Every time Uncle Levi sang out, “POP,” she’d rap the edge of the frying pan with the turner.

I was still so mad and messed up that their playing sounded silly to me. I stopped in the summer kitchen, took my shoes off, and set the pail of milk inside the pantry doorway. Then I went to the sink to wash. “By hub, Ralph, we’ll get an early start on that hossrake chore,” Uncle Levi called out to me between the pops. “Wa’n’t it lucky running onto that bee-trade ad? I spied it out while you was gone for the cows last night. It’s a God’s wonder you ever got Thomas started off from here. What was you doing so long with that cussed calf?” And then he started with, “Around and ’round,” again.

“Loading it,” was all I said, as I pulled my shirt sleeves up and started to wash.

Uncle Levi stopped singing, I heard Millie come to the pantry doorway, then I could feel them both standing there and looking at my back. Millie was the first one to make a sound. She sort of snickered, and said, “Ain’t a mite het up, be you, Ralphie?”

“My name isn’t Ralphie; it’s Ralph,” I told her, and I wasn’t a bit careful to make it sound pleasant.

“Great day of judgment,” Uncle Levi chuckled. “What did you; mop down the tie-up with that calf afore you loaded her?”

“No,” I said. “She fell,” and went right on washing.

“Calc’late Thomas give you a little help; or was it hindrance?”

“Hindrance,” I said, and scooped a double handful of soapsuds onto my face.

Uncle Levi had stopped chuckling. “By hub,” he said, “I never seen a man could get a critter so het up as Thomas can! Can’t lead a hoss to water without getting him atop the backhouse at least once!”

Buttons clicked on a chair seat behind me, and Millie said, “There’s some clean clothes,
Ralph
. Better get into ’em afore you come to the table. Victuals is all ready.”

All through breakfast, Millie and Uncle Levi kept joshing each other, but I didn’t feel like joshing. And I didn’t have very much to say while we were picking out the tools and carrying them down to the old hayrake. We’d just propped up the end that had the crumpled wheel when Uncle Levi said, “Thomas must have got you about as het up as he did the calf this morning. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Get it off your stomach, Ralph,” he told me. “It’s the things he keeps down that poisons a man; not the things he gets rid of.”

“Well, I might be a fool,” I said, “but I don’t like to be told it forty times in five minutes.”

“A tarnal fool?” Uncle Levi asked, and winked at me.

“Yes, a tarnal fool. And I don’t like it.”

Uncle Levi chuckled a little. “I didn’t, neither, when I was a boy. Used to make me so cussed mad I’d want to skin Thomas alive. Afore he went off to the war, I used to ache for the day I’d be big enough to lick him.” Uncle Levi straightened up and patted his fat belly. “Calc’late I started this bread basket on its way afore I was ten years old; stuffing it with victuals so’s I’d grow bigger than what Thomas was.”

“Did you ever lick him?” I asked.

“Can’t say as ever I did. Time he come back from the war, I was a trifle bigger than him, but he had malaria. Ain’t been in the best of health since.”

“It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t licked him, if he goes around calling everybody a tarnal fool.”

“Licks hisself. Calc’late it’s cost poor Thomas many a dollar and many a friend. Recollect hearing my half-sister, Eunice, tell of his saying it afore he was knee high to a toad. Father thought ’twas clever.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s clever now,” I said.

“No. No, ’tain’t. But it’s a habit. Get a habit when you’re young, and it’s harder to get over than blue eyes. Thomas, he don’t mean no more by it than Sim Smiley means when he says he’s going to kill his old woman.”

“Well, I get just as mad as if he meant it,” I said, “and I can’t help it.”

“Don’t pay it no mind, I . . . Great day of judgment! This ain’t doing nothing for this old hayrake, is it? First thing we know, Thomas, he’s likely to come raring back here and catch us at it. By hub, I hope he makes a good trade on them cussed bees. If he don’t, he’ll be sorer than a cut thumb about us planing to rake hay with it.”

“And if he makes a good trade?” I asked.

“Can’t always tell with Thomas, but you got to watch your chances. Like as not, if he makes a powerful good trade, and if we don’t wave the cussed hossrake right afore his nose, he’ll never let on he knows we used it. Let’s get on with it. I’d kind of like to see the orchard in windrows afore he gets home.”

The horserake didn’t take as long to fix as I’d thought it might. We took all the bent and broken pieces up to the forge. Uncle Levi built up the fire and, while I robbed pieces off the wrecked machine and bolted them onto the better one, he did the blacksmithing. With the early start we’d got, we were all finished by ten o’clock.

The yella colt didn’t give me much trouble in harnessing, but he made up his mind that he wouldn’t pull the horserake. By the time he’d settled down to do it, we’d lost more than an hour. He’d thrown himself down three or four times, squirmed and bucked out of his harness over and over, and acted exactly as if he’d been eating loco weed. I’d had to wire his ears together, tie a string around his tongue, throw dirt in his mouth, and even hog-tie him like a calf for branding. It was while I had him hog-tied that he decided to behave himself. And, once he’d decided, there was nothing more to it. He let us hitch him into the shafts without a bobble, and when I climbed up onto the seat he walked off as quietly as Old Nell would have. He didn’t even jump when I tripped the gears to dump our first load.

Uncle Levi brought sandwiches and a pitcher of milk to the orchard for me, and when I’d finished raking he took one wheel and the shafts off the horserake. He said it would be sort of waving it under Grandfather’s nose if we left it all together.

In Colorado, the hayracks were flat platforms on wheels, but Grandfather’s was built more like a basket. The bottom was only about three feet wide, and there was a high, flaring fence all around it. Instead of having boards for the floor, it was made of half a dozen birch poles. Most of them were rotten, and nearly a third of the fence stakes were broken or missing. While I was doing the raking, Uncle Levi had made new stakes and floor poles for it. After I’d unharnessed and fed the yella colt, I helped him build them into the hayrack.

It took us till nearly sundown, and Grandfather hadn’t come home when we finished, so Uncle Levi went with me to get the cows. I took him past the high stony field, told him again how well I thought it would do in strawberries and tomatoes, and then we walked along the brow of the hill above Lisbon Valley. There was a little green meadow just beyond the foot of the hill, and a girl drove four or five cows into it from behind Grandfather’s beech woods. She was wearing a white dress and, against it, her long hair looked as black and shiny as polished jet. “Annie Littlehale,” Uncle Levi said when she came into sight. “Clever little thing. ’Bout your age. Hear tell she can cook better than any woman roundabouts.”

I wanted to ask him if Annie was pretty, but I didn’t quite like to, so I just said, “I see our cows are waiting at the bars.”

Grandfather was home when we got in with the cows. Old Nell was standing in the dooryard, and Grandfather was down at the beehives. The minute we came out of the barn, he called, “Levi! Levi! Come see the powerful good trade I made. Didn’t get the colonies I sot out for. Man wouldn’t trade; Ralphie dirtied the heifer up too much a-loading her, but I seen most of the bee men ’roundabouts there, and I made a tarnal good trade. Come see ’em.”

They were still down there when I’d unharnessed Old Nell and watered her, but by the time I’d finished the chores, supper was ready and they were at the table. Grandfather was so excited about all the trades he’d tried to make that he wouldn’t eat his supper, and Millie had to make him an eggnog with a spoonful of whiskey in it. When I went upstairs to write Mother a letter, he was still telling Uncle Levi and Millie about his trading.

It was just by luck that I saw Grandfather looking over my raking job the next morning. He didn’t usually get up until after I’d finished chores, and I seldom left the barn until I went to feed Clara Belle’s calf, after milking. That morning Old Bess wasn’t waiting to catch her squirt of milk, and when I whistled for her, she came running in, wet, from the direction of the orchard. I just happened to glance out through the tie-up window, and there was Grandfather. He had his hands linked behind his back, and was walking along slowly between the windrows. His head was turning from side to side, and he looked as if he were trying to find something he’d lost. He couldn’t have stayed out there more than two minutes after I saw him. Before I had finished milking Martha, he called from the front barn doorway, “What you dawdling over them chores for, Ralphie? Time flies! We got haying to do today.”