Fields of Home (22 page)

23

The Colt and I Become Friends

T
HERE
had been a big piece of corned beef in one of the packages Uncle Levi gave me to bring down to the farm. The first thing I did after Grandfather drove away was to fry myself four eggs, and put the corned beef on to boil. While I was finishing the chores and taking the cows to pasture, it boiled dry and burned black on the bottom. Before I left for the high field, I scraped some of the black off the meat and filled the kettle with water. Then I crammed the stove full of hard wood and closed the dampers, so it would keep cooking most of the forenoon.

The yella colt fought me again that morning when I harnessed him, and he raised Cain during the first hour in the field. He got a leg outside one of the traces after I thought he was all settled down. Without thinking, I stepped forward to make him put his foot back in, and he kicked quicker than a flash of lightning. His hoof spanked sharply on my thigh, just above my knee. If I’d been a few inches closer, it might have broken my leg. I grabbed up the line ends to beat him with them, but stopped myself. It wouldn’t have done any good, and would only have made him hate me worse. Instead, I kept him working hard all the rest of the morning, with only rest enough to keep from hurting his wind.

I’d thought I would have some corned beef for my dinner, but I didn’t. The fire had burned out when I went to the house at noon, and the beef was as tough as whang leather. The water around it looked like strong black coffee, and was as bitter as walnut husks. I drained it off, put on fresh water, then built up the fire and fried myself four more eggs.

The colt worked pretty well during the afternoon. I didn’t have to wire his ears together once, but he was sulky, and kept his head turned just enough that he could keep an eye on me all the time. Except for the couple of times I ran to the house to put more wood on the fire, I kept him working hard. By the time Annie came for her cows, he was plodding as steadily as Old Nell would have, and I let him stand in his traces when I went to the brow of the hill to wave to her.

I didn’t go down to the valley, but Annie called up to me, “Are you sure there isn’t anything I could do to help you around the house? Couldn’t I make the beds and help out with the cooking?”

I wanted to say yes, but I remembered how crabby Grandfather had been when he thought I’d gone into his room, so I called back, “I’ve got a big piece of corned beef on cooking for supper, and the beds only take a few minutes, so I guess we’ll be all right, but thank you anyway.”

I went back to the yella colt, started him for the barn, and went for our cows. Without the calves to bother them, they were waiting at the pasture bars, and lowed for their milking when they saw me coming. Grandfather hadn’t come home when I had the barn chores finished, the milk put away in the cellar, and the potatoes on to boil. The corned beef was fairly tender by then, so I pushed the pot onto the back of the stove and went out to wait for him. He hadn’t taken Old Bess with him that morning, and it was a bright starlight evening, so I blew out the lamp, and Bess and I sat on the doorstone, waiting.

I must have been more tired than I realized. I didn’t wake up till Old Bess raised her head quickly from my lap. There was the slow clump of a horse’s feet coming up the driveway, and the squeak, now and then, of wagon wheels. When I got up, Nell was coming slowly past the side of the house. Her head was hanging low and, against the light of the sky, I could see Grandfather’s outline on the wagon seat. His head was low, too, and he was hunched over enough that I thought he was asleep. I called, “Hi, Grandfather!” to wake him, but he didn’t answer. As I ran to the wagon, he raised his head slowly, and said, “Couldn’t find a trace of her no place. Ralphie, your old grampa’s all tuckered out.”

“I’ve got some good supper cooked,” I told him. “You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten. I’ll take care of Old Nell while you get washed up. There’s hot water on the stove.”

“Gorry, I be a little weary,” was all he said as he climbed down over the wheel and sort of stumbled toward the doorway.

I had just pulled the harness off Nell when Grandfather called me angrily from the house. “What in time and tarnation you been up to whilst I been gone?” he shouted, as I came out of the barn. “What’s all them eggshells a-doing in the swill pail? What did you ruin the meat for?”

“I didn’t ruin the meat,” I said, as I went toward the house, “and those are just shells from the eggs I had for breakfast and dinner. There wasn’t anything else to eat.”

“Plenty pork in the barrel, wa’n’t there? Plenty potatoes in the bin. Don’t be so choosy ’bout your victuals; eggs is eighteen cents a dozen!” Then, without waiting for me to get to the house, he stamped off to his room and slammed the door.

While I’d been sleeping on the doorstone, the corned beef had burned and the burnt taste had cooked all the way through the piece. Hungry as I was, I couldn’t swallow any of it without gagging. The potatoes had boiled to a porridge of mush and skins. I strained out some of the best of it, ate it, drank some milk, and went to bed.

I expected Grandfather to be cross the next morning, but he wasn’t. When he called me, his voice seemed cheerful, and when I went down to the kitchen he had flour scattered all over the back pantry. “Whacking us up a nice mess of biscuits, Ralphie,” he called to me. “Ain’t nothing better of a morning than nice good hot biscuits and new honey. Got a busted comb out to the bee shop. I’ll pop these biscuits into the oven and fetch it whilst you’re at your chores. Come a-running whenst they’re hot.”

I came running when Grandfather hollered, but the biscuits weren’t the best. They were dead brown all over, as hard as rocks, and not over an inch high. “Curious, ain’t it?” Grandfather said, as he pulled them out of the oven. “Must be the tarnal saleratus was damp, or the milk wa’n’t sour enough. Curious! Oh, well, what’s the odds? I got to attend an auction over t’other side of Lisbon Village, but I’ll whack you up a nice mess of biscuits for your dinner afore I go. Now you run on and finish your chores whilst I cook us a kettle of porridge.”

The oatmeal wasn’t burned that morning, but it wasn’t half cooked either, and there were hard lumps in it. I ate a few mouthfuls, drank some milk, and took the cows to pasture. Grandfather was down at the beehives when I came back to harness the horses. I didn’t go down, but slipped into the kitchen through the woodshed. I couldn’t pick stones all forenoon without something more to eat. I boiled four eggs good and hard, put them into my pocket, and took the yella colt to the high field.

The colt balked only once all morning, but most of the time he kept watching me, and he laid his ears back whenever I went near him. I carried a stout stick on the stone rake, and I never went past his heels that I didn’t have it ready to swing at them. I almost hoped he would kick at me, so I’d be able to teach him a lesson he’d remember, but he didn’t lift a foot. After each trip across the field and back, I’d let the old horse rest a few minutes by the orchard wall. From there, I could see Grandfather at the beehives. He hadn’t changed a bit from the way he was doing things before he’d sent me home. As soon as the mailman came, he went to the box, into the house for a couple of minutes, and then drove away.

When the yella colt and I left the high field at noon, we had half of it raked. On the part we’d done since I’d come back, the stones lay in even rows across the ground, like gray stripes on a big piece of brown cloth. The raking hadn’t been very hard work for me, but it had been awfully hard for one horse. For the last hour of the morning, the colt plodded along with his head as low as the check rein would let it hang. At the barn, I took his harness off, wiped the sweat from his belly and legs, and gave him an extra quart of bran. I knew I had him worked down enough that he wouldn’t give me any more trouble, and I was a little ashamed of myself for fear I’d worked so old a horse too hard.

When I went into the kitchen, I found the second batch of biscuits Grandfather had baked on the back of the stove. They were still in the pan, were cold, and no higher than the first ones. The only difference was that these were white where the others had been brown, and the only reason they weren’t as hard was because they were half raw. I tried to eat one, but couldn’t, and there was nothing else in the house except oatmeal, raw potatoes, and salt pork. Grandfather had taken every last egg with him when he drove away. After I’d put potatoes on to boil, I went hunting hens’ nests. Altogether I found nine eggs, boiled them while the potatoes cooked, and hid them in the barn for a time when I’d need them. Then I fried pork, and sat down at the table. While I was eating, I got an idea how to save myself a lot of work in unloading the stones.

When I went back to the high field, I took along a heavy piece of chain with a hook on it, and the ropes and pulleys from the horsefork. After I’d hauled the first drag load of stones close to the orchard wall, I climbed over and fastened one of the pulleys to the trunk of an apple tree. It happened to be an August Sweet tree. The apples were just beginning to turn yellow, and I was still hungry, so I ate one. It was sweet and good. Before I went back to the field, I filled my pockets with apples. The yella colt either smelled them or saw me chewing. He turned his head toward me and nickered softly.

In all my life I’d never been around any horse long without loving him, but I’d almost hated the yella colt right from the first day. If I hadn’t been ashamed of myself for working him too hard, I would probably have remembered his kicking me, and would still have been peeved at him when he nickered. Instead, I thumped one of the apples on a stone to crack it, then held the pieces up on my palm for the old horse to eat. He picked them off carefully with his lips, and stood rubbing his nose against me as he ate them. Then I cracked another apple and fed it to him. As he chewed, I scratched his forehead, and said, “You haven’t had any barns burn, or fields go back to the wilderness, have you? What makes you so crabby? Did your mother spoil you when you were little, or have you got horse malaria? They say people grow alike from living together. Is that what ails you? I’ll bet, if you’d been my colt from the day you were born, you’d never have grown up to be so ornery.”

I fed the colt four apples, and ate two myself, before I went back to the tackle. All the time I was fussing with him, he kept rubbing his nose against me and nickering quietly. Of course, I knew he was only asking for more apple, but it almost sounded as if he were trying to answer me. With the last piece of the fourth apple, I told him, “I’ll be friends if you will, and I won’t tie your ears together again until I know for sure that you don’t want to be friends any more.”

I wasn’t too positive the tackle idea would work. With one pulley fastened to a tree trunk in the orchard, I brought the doubled ropes across the top of the stonewall, hitched the chain to the pulley on the opposite end, and slipped the hook under the far edge of the stone drag. If a horse could pull hard enough, I thought the drag would skid sideways till it was against the wall, then turn up on its side and dump the load. If everything went right, it would save nearly half my work. I’d planned to give the yella colt a little slack on the tote rope, then rush him hard into the pull. For some reason, I didn’t want to do it that way after I’d fed him the apples. I wanted to see if he’d do it for me on a pull that he wasn’t sure he could make. Not very many balky horses will stay with a pull if they think it’s too much for them.

When everything was ready, I hooked the old horse’s singletree to the tote rope, led him forward till the rope lifted off the ground, and stopped him. Then I looped the reins over his hame knob, went back, and leaned against the wall. I didn’t make a sound until he’d turned his head to see where I was and what I was doing. I wanted him to know I wasn’t near enough to hit him, and that I didn’t have hold of the reins. As his head turned toward me, I clucked—just twice, about two seconds apart. The yella colt stepped forward, leaned a little into the collar, and felt the load with his shoulders. He didn’t slack off, but turned his head again, as if he were trying to tell me it was too heavy. I didn’t move, but clucked twice more. On the second cluck, the knots of muscle began raising along his haunches and thighs. He crouched a little, and his hind hoofs sank deeper into the soft ground. Inch by inch, the heavily loaded stone drag began to skid sideways. The edge met the wall, and slowly, slowly, the far side began to lift from the ground. When I looked back at the yella colt, his neck was bowed, every sinew in his legs was taut as a harp string, and his ears were pointed straight forward. I could hardly wait for the drag to tip clear up and spill its load. My fists were clenched, and my own muscles pulled till they ached. Before the rumble of stones faded, I called, “Whoa,” to him, and ran to his head. I wasn’t even ashamed that tears were running down my face as I told him I’d never fight him again, and that he was always going to be my horse.

24

A Thousand Things to Show Me

U
NTIL
Saturday evening, I didn’t see much of Grandfather. Every morning, he was up before daylight, drove away by sunup, and didn’t come home until after dark. He never told me where he was going, but, from what he took with him and what he brought home, I knew he was going to Lewiston every day, and to whatever auctions he could find. Before the end of the week, he had taken away every egg the hens laid, all the frying chickens, Clara Belle’s calf, and the new spotted one; and had brought home a big, ugly, Holstein bull and two more cows. He brought the last cow just after I’d finished milking Friday night, but was so tired that he didn’t go to the barn when I put her in the tie-up.

Twice, while I was frying the pork for supper, Grandfather told me to hurry up and get the victuals on the table, but when it was ready he ate only a few bites. For several minutes, he sat staring at Millie’s pink apron that still hung on a nail by the pantry door. Then he said, wearily, “Gorry, there’s a tarnal lot of mills off to Lewiston. Cal’late I’ll go to bed. Got to make an early start, come morning. Cal’late I’ll fetch them twin steer calves off to market. Wouldn’t make pulling critters no ways for two, three years, and eat as much provender as a pair of milk cows. I and you is going into the butter business, Ralphie. No sense a-keeping steer critters ’round.”

I was sure that Grandfather didn’t want to get rid of the little steers, and that they were just an excuse for his going to Lewiston to hunt Millie. I wished I could have thought of something else for him to take instead, or that I could have told him something that would help him find her, but I couldn’t.

Even with the tackle, stone hauling was hard work, but it had become sort of fun since the yella colt and I found we were friends. My biggest troubles were meals and milk. Neither Grandfather nor I could cook anything but boiled potatoes and fried salt pork. He always burned the oatmeal, and his biscuits never raised. By the end of the week, he was hardly eating anything, and I was getting awfully tired of pork and potatoes. Apples and milk helped, but they didn’t put much of a leg under me for hauling stones.

With all the calves gone and seven cows in the barn, I was swamped with milk. When I finished the chores Saturday morning, I had every pan, crock, and pail in the house full to the brim, but didn’t know how to make it into butter. I hurried our cows to pasture, and went down to meet Annie Littlehale when she came with hers. I thought that if I could get her to come up to the house for an hour or two, she could show me about the butter and teach me to make johnnycake and biscuits. Annie said she’d come, but that there wasn’t any need for me to stay out of the field; that she’d show me how to make them when I came in for dinner. Then she asked me which I liked best, pie or cake.

“My grandfather likes pie best,” I told her. “Millie made one with apples and wild strawberries, and he ate nearly half of it.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” she said, as she started back to the pasture gate. “I’ll come up as soon as the breakfast dishes are finished, and I’ll call you when I’m ready for you to come in for dinner.”

It was a long forenoon for me. I never drove the yella colt to the wall with a load of stones that I didn’t stop to look toward the house. Once Annie came to the orchard for apples, once I saw her in Millie’s little garden, and another time she was walking up the road from her house with some packages in her arms. I didn’t want her to see that I was excited when she called me to dinner, so I led the yella colt slowly down the hill. But when we reached the barn, I rattled his harness off as fast as I could, fed him, and then walked to the house as if I wasn’t in any hurry.

Annie had all sorts of things laid out on the pantry table. There was a bowl of eggs she’d gathered from the henhouse, cream she’d skimmed from milk in the cellar, and butter, chocolate, and white lard she’d brought from home. After I’d washed my face and hands, she tied Millie’s pink apron on me, and said, “There’s no sense in making both johnnycake and biscuits for dinner; which one do you want to try?”

“Both of them,” I told her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “They’re only good when they’re hot. There’ll be lots of other days. Which one shall we make today?”

“Well, I’d still like to make them both,” I told her. “Tomorrow is Sunday. I won’t be working in the field, and you’ll be gone to Sunday school. If I knew how, I’d make hot biscuits for breakfast and hot johnnycake for dinner.” It wasn’t so much that I was in a hurry to learn to make them, but I liked to be with Annie. It seemed to me the more things she taught me, the longer the lesson might last.

She still said it was silly, but I made both biscuits and johnnycake, and she told me just what to do and when to do it. Before I started the biscuits, she explained to me about having to judge the amount of soda to use by the sourness of the milk, and about sifting the flour twice to get plenty of air into it. Then, as soon as I’d poured the sour milk in with the flour, she made me hurry to beat the band. She said it was hard to make bad biscuits if you had them in the oven within two minutes of the time the sour milk touched the soda.

The johnnycake was easier than the biscuits. The batter was looser, it didn’t have to be rolled or cut out, and Annie didn’t make me hurry with it. After I had a cup of sour cream stirred into the meal, flour, and molasses, she had me beat in three eggs. “You can use as many eggs as you want to,” she told me. “If you and Mr. Gould are going to try to live on salt pork and potatoes, I’d put plenty of eggs in the johnnycake. They’ll do you just as much good that way as any other, and it makes a nicer johnnycake. You can use sour milk instead of cream, but if you do that, you’ll have to put in shortening. You should always use cream instead of milk when you’re doing hard work like hauling those stones. It will be good for Mr. Gould, too. He’s apt to be sick if he doesn’t eat good rich food. Goodness! You’re going to beat that into a froth. Let’s get it into the pan; the biscuits should be ready by now.”

The biscuits were ready, and they were pretty. The last second before they’d gone into the oven, Annie had frosted the tops of them with cream and marked them with fork pricks. When they came out, they looked like little white castles with brown roofs.

I’d had lots of good dinners at home, and at some of the ranches where I’d worked, but never one that I liked much better than that one. Annie had made a boiled dinner of vegetables she found in the garden and, beside the biscuits and johnnycake, there was a warm apple pie and cupcakes with maple sugar frosting on them. As she cut the pie, Annie said, “This one hasn’t any strawberries in it, but this afternoon I’ll make one that does have. I didn’t have a chance to go for them this morning. My! You had lots of milk set. I couldn’t find a bowl to cook with till I skimmed some of it. I’ll take care of the rest of it this afternoon, and the first of the week we’ll have to churn. You shouldn’t let it set so long. Every evening, you should skim the milk from the day before.”

Annie let me tell her a little about Colorado while we were eating, and she told me a little about the high school she went to at Lisbon Falls, but she wouldn’t let me stop to help her with the dishes after we’d finished. She said that Grandfather was too old to do hard work and that she’d only come to help me if it wouldn’t interfere with my work in the fields. Just before I went back to the barn, she said she’d leave a pot of beans in the oven, and told me to keep them filled with water, and to keep a slow fire going till bedtime. Then she said she’d leave everything for supper on the back of the stove when she went.

The sun was low enough that the shadows of the pines on the ridge stretched across the orchard before I left the high field. When I went to the pasture for the cows it was twilight. I had them halfway to the barn when I saw Grandfather and Old Nell coming down the road. Nell was walking with her head bobbing low, and from the way Grandfather was sitting hunched on the wagon seat I knew he hadn’t found any trace of Millie. I hated to have him feeling so bad about it, but I didn’t know what I could say or do. Instead of leaving the cows in the barnyard and going to meet him, I put them in the tie-up, and closed the stanchion yokes on their necks.

There was no sound from the dooryard, so I went to see what Grandfather was doing. Old Nell was standing in the driveway, but Grandfather was nowhere in sight. Then a light showed in the windows of the open chamber above the kitchen. I saw the lamp move past one window, then the other, and then the light faded away. I was sure Grandfather wouldn’t have gone up there, and went running to the house. I’d just come into the kitchen when the door from the front stairway opened, and Grandfather stood in the doorway with a lamp in his hand. His face looked like a little boy’s when he first spies the Christmas tree, and he sang out, “You fooled me, Ralphie! You fooled me! Why didn’t you tell me Millie was a-coming home? Where you cal’late the little minx is a-hiding at? Gorry! Gorry sakes alive!”

For half a minute, I thought Grandfather was right, and that Millie had come back. Then the lamplight spread across the set table, the pots and pans on the back of the stove, and Grandfather’s slippers, set neatly beside his rocker. I knew in a moment that he was wrong, but I hated to tell him so. While I was hunting for the right words, Grandfather looked at me questioningly, and asked, “What’s the matter, Ralphie? Be she gone off again? Why didn’t she stay till I come home? I’d a . . . Was it account of the . . . ” And then he just stood there looking at me blankly.

“No, she hasn’t gone,” I said. “She didn’t come home. Annie Littlehale came up to show me how to cook. She stayed to do the dishes after I went back to the field at noon. It looks as if she did some scrubbing too, and left supper ready for us.”

As I spoke, I noticed that Grandfather’s hand was trembling so that the lamplight flickered. The flickering grew sharper for a minute as he peered around the kitchen. Then he snapped, “Don’t want no supper! Don’t want no tarnal neighbor womenfolks a-snooping ’round this house a-cooking the victuals! I won’t have it! I won’t have it, I tell you!” With every word, his voice grew louder until, at the end, he was shouting.

“Annie wasn’t snooping,” I told him quietly. “I’m sure she didn’t go into any part of the house except the kitchen, the pantry, and the cellar.”

“Keep her out of here! Keep away from that girl, I tell you!” Grandfather shouted, shoved past me, and started toward his room. At the pantry doorway he stopped and shouted again. “What in thunderation you been up to anyway? Four pies! Layer cake! Cup cakes! Wastin’! Wastin’!”

Four swill pails were lined up under the sink, filled nearly to the tops with sour skimmed milk. Grandfather snatched the long handled mixing spoon from its nail by the table, and scooped deep into the nearest pail. When the spoon came up, there were two broken eggshells on it. He dipped again and again. Each time there was a shell on the spoon. “Wastin’! Wastin’!” he snapped out as he scooped. “Wastin’ as her mother! Throws out more in a teaspoon than what Fred Littlehale can fetch home in a wheelbarrow. Best tarnal bottom-land farm in the country roundabouts, and what’ll he have to pass on to his children? Nothing! Nothing! Mortgaged to the handle! Work like a fool and watch his womenfolks heave his worth away in fancy victuals! Them womenfolks better go to watching the bees! Bees don’t eat theirselves out of house and home! Saving! Saving for the generations to come! Great thunderation! Eggs is eighteen cents a dozen! Stay away from that girl, Ralphie! Stay away from her! First thing you know, she’ll learn you to be a spendthrift.” Then he stamped off to his room and slammed the door.

I hardly slept at all that night. It was nearly midnight before I went to bed, and then I couldn’t get Annie out of my mind. I thought of dozens of ways I might be able to get Grandfather to let her come back again, and then I’d think of the reasons he’d say she couldn’t come. When the first gray of morning showed at the window, I got up, dressed, and took my shoes in my hand. I didn’t put them on till I’d tiptoed through the kitchen and out to the doorstone. As I sat tying the laces, Old Bess came from the woodshed and tucked her head into my lap.

When I’d got up, I hadn’t any idea what I was going to do, but as I stroked Old Bess’ head, I whispered, “Let’s go for a walk, Bess. Let’s go down to the brook in the hidden field, and see if the raccoon still comes back there to wash his food.”

It was a beautiful morning. Dew had settled thickly on the grass. As the light spread across the eastern sky, mist lay in the valley like milk in a great green bowl. The smell of pine was sweet and heavy in the air. From the ridge above the house, a crow cawed as though he were calling someone. There were three separate, throaty notes, and, from somewhere in the valley, a rooster answered.

The light grew and spread as Old Bess and I climbed the hill through the orchard. A pink glow touched a cloud above the dark pines along Hall’s hill. Slowly, it changed to red. The red widened and deepened along the hill, till it looked as if the whole world beyond were in flames. Meadow larks sang from the stonewalls and, as Bess and I walked along the brow of the hill above Littlehale’s pasture, a partridge strummed in the beech woods. We stopped, and standing there on the hill, looking down at the little meadow where I had first seen Annie, Mother’s “Nut Brown Maiden” song began going through my mind.

All the way, down through the maple grove, the hemlock woods, and the hidden fields, the rhythm kept swaying back and forth in my head. It was still there when we had walked over every inch of ground where Annie and I had walked before. When Bess and I had gone back and were sitting on the granite outcropping in the pasture, words began to fit themselves along the path of the rhythm. They were beautiful, rhyming words. I wished Annie had been there beside me, so I could have said them to her, and I was afraid I might forget them before I ever saw her again. While Old Bess slept, I found a sliver of flint, and scratched the verse into the gray table of the outcropping. I sort of hoped that, someday, Annie might come there again and see it.