Fields of Home (11 page)

While we were working, I asked Uncle Levi why Grandfather didn’t have a horsefork in the barn for unloading hay. For the past two days, I’d been figuring out the different places a pulley could be hung from the rafters, so that a horsefork would drop the hay onto any mow in the barn without a bit of pitching. Uncle Levi listened till I’d told him just how a horsefork would work. Then he shook his head a little, and said, “You’d have a cussed big battle with Thomas. You’re always telling about how your father done things, and always trying to do like he done, ain’t you?”

I didn’t know just what he was getting at, but nodded and said, “Yes, because he always knew the best way to do things.”

“That’s the ticket,” Uncle Levi said. “That’s what Thomas thinks, too. Father learned him to farm the way he done it hisself, and you’ll find Thomas is pretty good at it. He ain’t never changed where he could help it, and I don’t calc’late he ever will.”

“I was just thinking,” I said. “With a platform rack and a horsefork, two men could have put that hay up in a day and a half. It took four of us two days and a half.”

Uncle Levi didn’t look up from his welding for at least ten minutes. Then he stopped hammering and said, “Never afore seen Thomas want to get away from the old place, but this summer he’s got his heart sot on going to his regiment’s reunion off to Gettysburg. Comes on the Fourth of July, but he won’t go less’n the hay’s all in the barn. Might happen Thomas would stand for one of them cussed machines if ’twas the only thing that would get the hay in afore the Fourth.”

“Well, it’s the only thing that would do it unless we have two or three more men,” I said. “And, besides, it isn’t really a machine. It’s just a big grapple fork with ropes and pulleys.”

Uncle Levi went back to the forge. In a few minutes, he said, “Calc’late we could whack one together out of heavy steel strap? There’s plenty pulleys ’round here. How big a hank of rope you figure we’d need?”

The next few days the weather was fine, but Grandfather wasn’t. His chills and fever were worse instead of better, and he had to stay in bed. That was when I found why Millie slept in the parlor. She’d get up four or five times during the night to take care of him, and she gave him, in teaspoonfuls, nearly a third of Uncle Levi’s bottle of whiskey.

The mowing machine worked almost like new after we’d fixed it. Uncle Levi kept working around the carriage house while I was mowing the east field. He kept the forge going most of the day, and the ring of his hammer would follow me way out across the field. By night, he had most of the parts for the grapple fork shaped, and ready to be riveted together.

I finished mowing in the middle of the second afternoon. Then Uncle Levi hitched Old Nell to the spring wagon and drove down to Lisbon Falls. While he was gone, I’d figured out just where to hang the high pulley in the barn and bored a hole for it in the ridgepole. When he came home, he had steak, oranges, baker’s bread, a piece of corned beef the size of the dish pan, and a big coil of heavy rope.

Before I went out to rake hay the next morning, we strung up the tackle for the horsefork in the barn. Uncle Levi stood in the center of the floor and watched me climb to the peak of the barn. When I’d hooked the pulley block to a clevis, I lifted it to the ridgepole, and pushed the clevis pin through the hole I’d bored. “You sure that’s going to be stout enough, Ralph?” he called up to me. “Hole looks pretty nigh the bottom edge of the beam. There’ll be a powerful strain on it.”

“Sure,” I told him. “It’s higher into the wood than it probably looks from down there.”

“Just so’s you’re sure,” he called back. “Don’t want nothing to go wrong with the cussed thing.”

“It won’t,” I told him, then wrapped my legs tight around the new rope, and went sliding down to the barn floor.

Grandfather really wasn’t well enough to be up but, when we were ready to haul hay from the east field, he wouldn’t stay in bed any longer. I’d put all the low ropes and pulleys for the horsefork onto one of the side mows, so he wouldn’t notice them if he went to the barn, and we hadn’t even told Millie about the big fork.

Everything went fine in the loading. For half a dozen shocks, Grandfather pitched as fast as he could go. Then he ran out of breath, passed Uncle Levi his fork, and went to look at the bees. When Millie and I drove the first load into the barn, Grandfather came from the beehives and climbed to the low mow above the tie-up. He didn’t notice the pulley ropes till I picked up one of the blocks, slid to the barn floor with it, and called to Millie to follow me. The pulley whanged against a wagon tire as I turned to catch it over the floor hook. The noise set Grandfather off like a charge of dynamite.

“What in time and tarnation!” he yelled. Then he saw the long rope dangling from the ridgepole, and Uncle Levi’s horsefork hanging in the space between the two high mows. I heard his pitchfork slam down onto the bare boards of the low mow, and he shouted, “What kind of fiddledeedee falderal’s going on here? Get that tarnal contraption out of here! Get it out, I tell you, afore it fall’s on somebody’s head! Levi, what in thunder you been sneaking into this barn whilst I been sick? Get it out! Get it out, I tell you!”

When Grandfather stopped for breath, it was easy to see that Uncle Levi had expected just what was happening. He squatted down on the edge of the high mow, and talked to Grandfather like a mother talking to a little boy who doesn’t want to go to bed. He kept telling him over and over that the horsefork was only so he wouldn’t have to break his back pitching hay all the rest of his life, and so we could get the haying done in time for him to go to the reunion.

Every minute or two, Grandfather would shout, “Lazy man’s contraption!” but each time he said it, a little more of the fire went out of his voice.

In the end, he let us try it, but he wouldn’t let me hitch Old Nell on the tote rope. The yella colt didn’t like the whiffletree dangling around his heels, and I had to tie his blinders together before he’d stop rearing and kicking. The last thing I did before I climbed up to set the fork was to tell Millie to lead him real slow, and to stop quick if I shouted.

Except for the yella colt’s jerking and jumping, everything went pretty well with the first forkful. There was about three hundreds pounds on it, and Uncle Levi yanked the trip line just at the right second to toss the hay clear to the back of the high mow.

Grandfather was still grumbling, “Lazy man’s contraption!” after the first load went up. After the third one, he climbed the ladder to the high mow, and stood watching like a little boy at a circus. “By fire!” I heard him sing out when Uncle Levi jerked the trip line on the next load.

Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the yella colt and the way the hayrack was built. I had to bounce my whole weight on the fork to get it through the matted hay in the bottom of the load, and I bounced a little too hard. The yella colt started off as if a firecracker had exploded behind him. When he’d taken up the slack in the tote-rope, the whole rack jumped a foot into the air and crashed back onto the wheels. I knew in a second that I’d pushed the fork too far and hooked the grapples under the floor of the hayrack. But, instead of stopping when I yelled “Whoa!” the yellow colt lunged hard into the collar. There was a ripping screech from the top of the barn, and I looked up just in time to see a big piece of ridgepole come shooting down past Grandfather’s head. It missed him by about six inches.

Grandfather wrapped his arms over the top of his head, and crouched on the edge of the high mow, as the strip of ridgepole shot into the barn floor and stood quivering. Ropes were still trailing behind it when he slammed his hat down onto the mow, jumped on it, and shouted at Uncle Levi, “Get out of here! Get out of here, afore you stave the whole place to smithereens! Get back to Boston afore I lose my temper! Don’t you never come down here again with no more of your infernal contraptions!”

I tried to tell Grandfather it was all my fault, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t listen to a word from Uncle Levi, either, but followed him to the barn door, shouting, “Don’t you durst come sneaking ’round here with your newfangled contraptions. Get out of here! Get out of here, I tell you!”

I drove Uncle Levi down to Lisbon Falls, and he wouldn’t even let me tell him how sorry I was that I’d messed everything up. He only grumbled, “Say nothing! Say nothing!” when I tried to talk to him. Once he said—and I think it was to himself—“Should have knowed better . . . Ain’t no sense a-trying to change him over.” The rest of the time, he just sat there looking like a tired old bear.

He didn’t say anything more till the train was pulling into the depot. Then he picked up his suitcase, took hold of my shoulder tight, and said, “Don’t let Thomas kill hisself off a-working, just to prove we was wrong.”

He had one foot up on the car step when he turned back, passed me a ring with four keys on it, and said, “Here, Ralph! You might have need of ’em. Them’s to the drawers in the workbench.” Then his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “The bottle’s under my mattress. See Thomas gets a spoonful afore supper every night.”

12

Millie Agrees to Help

G
RANDFATHER
hadn’t even come to the house when Uncle Levi left. I had looked back as we drove out of the yard, and he was yanking the tangled horsefork tackle out of the barn doorway. When I drove back in, the ripped-off piece of ridgepole was lying on top of the woodpile, and Grandfather was mowing down in the swale.

I unhitched Old Nell, watered her, and took her to the barn. What had been left of the load was still on the hayrack, and the yella colt was in his stall, with his harness tangled around his feet. I took it off him, and went down to tell Grandfather how sorry I was for having messed things up with the horsefork.

The swale was down below the cold spring that filled the watering trough at the back corner of the barn. When I’d mowed the east field, I’d had to cut around it. The ground was so soft that the mower wheels sank deep and the grass was so rank that the cutter bar couldn’t go through it. Grandfather was well out into the wettest part of the swale, swinging his scythe like fury. The cold water was above my ankles by the time I’d waded out to him. He was breathing so hard the whiskers flew around his mouth at every swing, but he didn’t slow up or look up, and before I’d said three words, he shouted, “Go off! Go off! Get out of here! Go see what more you can find to stave up!”

There was no use trying to talk to him. As I walked back toward the barn, I tried to make up my mind once and for all, whether I should go straight to Colorado, or go past Medford so I could say good-bye to Mother and the other children. I was still trying to decide, when the hogs in the barn cellar started squealing as though they were killing each other. I grabbed up the nearest stick, and ran in there as fast as I could go.

At first, it looked as if they might be fighting over a sea serpent in the pond at the foot of the manure pile. As my eyes became a little more used to the dimness, I could see that it was a long heavy rope. Near the top of the heap, one prong of the horsefork stuck out, with the grapple hook curved like a beckoning finger. I don’t know why I bothered to—except that Uncle Levi had put in so much work to make it—but I drove the hogs away, found a long plank, and fished both the fork and rope out of the mess. I cleaned the fork the best I could, hid it under the straw in an empty pig pen, and was stringing the rope along the top of the foundation wall, when Millie called dinner. By that time, I’d decided to stop off at Medford, and that I’d go into Boston to see Uncle Levi, so I could tell him where to find the horsefork.

There was no sense in starting off without my dinner, and I had to change clothes and get my suitcase, but I couldn’t go to the house the way I was. While I was washing at the spring, I saw Grandfather clambering up over the boulder wall to the dooryard. Old Bess was standing at the foot of it, watching him and whining. I could hear Millie scolding him for getting his feet wet right after he’d been sick in bed. By the time I got to the summer kitchen, they were wrangling at each other like a pair of stray cats. Millie was mad because he’d driven Uncle Levi away, and he was calling her a tarnal fool woman for not having told him we were building the horsefork. He wouldn’t take his shoes off, and tracked mud across her clean kitchen floor.

At the table, it was easy to see that they were both plenty peeved at me. They’d have paid more attention if a dog had been sitting in my chair. After a few minutes, I tried to tell Grandfather again that I was sorry about the ridgepole, and that I was going away, but he cut me off short. “Let your victuals stop your mouth! Let your victuals stop your mouth!” he scolded. Then, before I’d eaten my pie, he snapped, “Quit your dawdling! Get the hosses out! Time flies!”

I went outside, but I didn’t go right to the barn. I still had Uncle Levi’s bench keys in my pocket, and I thought I’d better hide them somewhere in the carriage house. I might not be able to see him when I stopped off at Medford, but I could write him a letter and tell him where I’d hidden them. It seemed to me that maybe a letter would be better than seeing him anyway. I could just write him that Grandfather had told me to go away. Then he wouldn’t blame me for going, and he couldn’t tell me the horsefork trouble was all my own fault; that everything would have been all right if I’d listened to him about the hole in the ridgepole being too near the edge. The more I thought of it, the more I knew that was just what he ought to tell me. It was the truth. If I hadn’t been so cocksure, Uncle Levi would still be right there with us, and we’d already have three or four loads of hay hauled from the east field. All the time I’d been thinking, I’d been walking back and forth in the carriage house. I stuffed the keys back into my pocket, and went to harness the horses.

That afternoon and the next day were about the worst time I ever had in my life. Grandfather was sick enough that he should have been in bed, but he wouldn’t go. He’d pitch hay till he was staggering. Then instead of going somewhere to rest, he’d rake scatterings and scold me. Once when he was about ready to drop, I said, “Uncle Levi told me not to let you . . . ”

“Levi! Levi!” he hollered. “Going off to Boston and leaving me with down hay in the field and rain a-coming on! Don’t you say Levi to me!” It didn’t look as if it would rain for a month, and I didn’t say Levi again, but I wished he were still there.

Millie was so worried about Grandfather that she was nearly sick herself, and the more she worried, the crosser she got. Beside cooking the meals and getting up to take care of Grandfather during the night, she was doing a man’s work in the field. I couldn’t tell whether she was still mad at me about the horsefork, or whether she was just so tired and worried that she couldn’t be decent to anybody. Twice, she yanked the yella colt around till she set him balking, then told Grandfather that if he didn’t get some hired help around there, his hay could rot in the field, and slammed off to the house. He yelled after her to mind her manners, and that he didn’t want any tarnal woman out in the field abusing the critters, but he did go to the road and talk to the mailman about looking for a hired man, and Millie did come back to help us.

At Grandfather’s, the mailman didn’t just bring the mail. He carried messages from one house to another, brought things from the stores in the village, or passed the word around if someone was looking for help.

The day after Uncle Levi went, three men came looking for jobs, but none of them stayed. One of them wanted a dollar and a half a day, and Grandfather would only pay a dollar. Another worked just long enough to be called a shiftless, lazy fool. The third man came in the middle of the afternoon and seemed to be a crackerjack. He said a dollar a day was all right with him, he could pitch hay better than most men, and he didn’t pay any attention to Grandfather’s or Millie’s crabbiness. From the time Uncle Levi went until the new man came, we’d only hauled three small loads of hay, but before sundown we’d put two great big loads on the mows.

When the man left us, he left in an awful hurry. Right after supper, I had to go for the cows and Grandfather went down to do something around the beehives. I might have been out in the pasture a little longer than I should have, because I circled around by the high field. As soon as I had our cows in the tie-up, I went to the house for the milk bucket, and the new hired man nearly ran over me. I was right at the summer-kitchen doorway when he came tearing out with Millie right behind him. She was swinging the heavy iron frying pan like a tennis racket, and there was hot grease all over the back of his shirt. He never stopped running till he was out in the road, and he never came back for his hat and jumper. “That’ll learn him a thing or two,” Millie snapped, as she watched him go. “Just like all the rest of the devilish men! Ain’t one of ’em you can trust as far as you can heave a skillet!”

During the night, Grandfather was pretty sick. I heard Millie up with him two or three times, and in the morning he was burning with fever. I wanted to go for a doctor, but he wouldn’t let me. He said my time would be better spent hauling hay than chasing off to the village, and that Millie could take care of him better than any tarnal doctor.

I’d never thought a woman like Millie would cry, but she came awfully close to it at the breakfast table. She blamed herself for driving off the good hay pitcher, and for not catching Uncle Levi and me before we had the horsefork up in the barn. She was sure all the hay was going to spoil in the fields, but the thing that seemed to make her feel worst was that Grandfather wouldn’t be able to go to the reunion. I tried to tell her that if they’d let me get a doctor, Grandfather would probably be well in a day or two, and that if we could find just one good man, be and I could take care of the haying. She’d only sniff at me, say there weren’t any good men, and that a spell like this one always lasted a week with Grandfather. Then she raked me all to pieces when I admitted that the horsefork had been my idea instead of Uncle Levi’s.

While I was harnessing the yella colt I got an idea. Grandfather’s being sick might be the only thing that would save the hay crop. At the rate we had been going, it would take more than a month to finish the job. Long before that, the grass would have gone to seed, dried up in the fields, and be worthless for hay. By using the horsefork for unloading, I thought two men could do the whole job in two weeks. I couldn’t see any chance of getting another man, but Millie was almost as good as one. If I could get her to help me use the horsefork when Grandfather didn’t know about it, we could save half the hay before he was out of bed. I was sure there was only one way I could get her to do it. I would have to make her think I was going away. I picked up the broken piece of ridgepole from the woodpile, took it to the carriage house, and called Millie. She didn’t want to come and was grouchy when she got there. “Now what kind of fool notion you got in your head?” she snapped at me, as she came through the doorway.

“It won’t make any difference to you what it is,” I said, “because I’m going back to Colorado right now. I just wanted to let you know, so nobody could say I’d run away.”

For about two seconds, Millie looked like a wildcat about to strike. Her hands drew into claws, and her eyes almost burned as she glared at me. Then, just as quickly, tears came, spilled over, and rolled down her cheeks. She swiped them away with the backs of her hands, “Fine kind of grandson for a man to have; leave him when he’s needed most,” she said chokingly.

“What’s the sense of my staying here any longer?” I asked her. “Grandfather drove Uncle Levi away, you drove the only good man we’ve had away, and I’ve hardly heard a decent word from either of you since I’ve been here.”

“Can’t you see he’s worried sick about getting the crop in afore it goes to ruin in the fields? You’d be cranky if you was worried as much as Thomas is. He’s a’ready like to worried hisself to death.”

“He isn’t as worried as he is bullheaded,” I told her. “If he had let us use the horsefork, we could have had the haying all finished in ten days.”

“Thomas don’t stand for no fool contraptions,” she snapped at me. “If you hadn’t put Levi up to making the fool thing, there wouldn’t have been no trouble, and the hay would have all been in the mows afore the Fourth of July.”

“It isn’t a fool thing,” I told her, “and the hay wouldn’t have been in by the Fourth without it. As near as I can figure, there are more than sixty loads left in the fields, most of it uncut, and the way we were going, it would have taken a month to get it all in.” Then I started to walk out of the carriage house, and said, “But what difference does it make now? I can’t do it alone, and I’ve had about all the scolding I’ll take from anybody.”

Millie grabbed my sleeve as I went by her. When I turned, there were tears in her eyes again, and both her face and her voice were pleading. “You ain’t really going, Ralphie . . . Ralph, be you? I’ll help you, and we can at least save some of it.”

It had worked around just the way I’d hoped it would, and gave me a chance to say, “We could save most of it if you weren’t just as bullheaded as Grandfather.”

“I ain’t bullheaded!” she snapped. Then she looked right into my eyes, and her under lip was trembling. “I won’t row at you no more, Ralph, and I’ll help you any way I can.”

“All right, Millie,” I said, and picked up the piece of ridgepole from where I’d stood it by the doorway. “Do you see where the hole was bored at the edge of the break?” She nodded, and I went on, “That’s the fool thing. That’s what happened because I was cocksure and bullheaded. If I’d put a new hole higher in the ridgepole, the way Uncle Levi wanted me to, it would never have torn out. You saw how well those first three loads went up. There’s nothing the matter with the horsefork. If we use it to unload with, you and I can put up half the hay before Grandfather is ever out of bed.”

Millie stood for three or four minutes, looking out across the fields and twisting one forefinger. “Where’s the cussed thing at now?” she asked.

“Down in the barn cellar. Grandfather threw it into the manure heap, but I fished it out.”

“He’ll be fit to wring your neck if he catches you using it . . . mine, too.”

“I thought you said he’d be sick in bed for a week.”

“He will, but you can’t trust him not to get up and go poking around.”

“Well,” I told her, “it’s just a case of whether I go now, or we get some of that hay in before he catches us. I’ll take a chance on my neck if you’ll take a chance on yours.”

“Get the hosses out!” Millie told me. “I’ll go see how Thomas is doing. Like as not he’ll sleep a little after being awake most of the night.” Then she hurried back to the house.