Fields of Home (5 page)

Millie had made a johnnycake to go with the fried pork and boiled potatoes for supper, and we had some of the cake that I hadn’t had a chance to try at noon, but the tea was terrible. It tasted as if it had been made by boiling musty alfalfa, and it was so strong you couldn’t see the spoon handle under the surface. She and Grandfather put milk and sugar in theirs. I tried it, but it was still as bitter as quinine. Though I didn’t mean to, I must have made a face when I tasted it, because the only thing Millie said to me all through supper was, “Don’t be so devilish finicky about your victuals! There’s worse where there’s none!”

Grandfather didn’t eat anything but a piece of cake and a cup of tea, and he dozed off to sleep at the table a couple of times before I’d finished. He was still asleep, with his head resting on the table, when Millie got up and took a faded old calico wrapper from a nail behind the kitchen door. She put it on over the fresh one she was wearing, tied a cloth over her head, and took a milk bucket down from the pantry shelf. I could see she was going out to do the barn chores, and said, “I’ll take care of the chores; I’ve done a lot of milking.”

All she said was, “Hmfff! I pity the poor critters!” and went out through the summer kitchen.

I couldn’t just sit in the house and let a woman do the barn work, so I took my cap and followed her. When I got there, she was standing at the tie-up doorway, pulling a pair of old rubbers on over her shoes. I tried again to get her to let me do the milking, but she said Clara Belle had a sore teat and would kick the daylights out of me. She did let me slop the hogs and do the rest of the chores, though.

When we went back to the house, Grandfather had gone to bed. Millie told me she had put my things in the front room at the head of the stairs, and she made me take my work shoes off before I went up. She came to the foot of the stairs while I was climbing them, and whispered, “That’s Levi’s room. If you go and get it all messed up, I’ll skin you alive.” Then, without saying goodnight, she went back into the kitchen and closed the hallway door.

There was just enough light left in the sky that I could see where the bed was and that a corner of the covers was turned back. I didn’t bother to look for my suitcase or a lamp, but took off everything except my BVDs and crawled in. I must have gone to sleep awfully quick, because the next thing I knew Millie was calling up the stairway, “Get up! What be you; cal’lating on sleeping the whole blessed day?” It was just about as light as it had been when I went to bed.

6

I Currycomb the Yella Colt

M
ILLIE
had a lamp lighted and was building a fire in the cook stove when I came down to the kitchen. I said good morning to her when I came in from the front stairway, but she only grumbled something about hoping she’d find the fires of hell built with Getchell birch when she got there. I didn’t know what Getchell birch was but, as I washed my face and hands at the pump sink in the back pantry, I could see she was having a bad time getting the fire started. Twice, she jerked a stove lid off, threw in kerosene from a tin dipper, and slammed the lid back as the flames shot up. Both times, red glowed from the front of the stove for half a minute, then died down, and billows of smoke poured out from every crack.

The wood I’d sawed the afternoon before had been hard maple, but it had been dry and I knew it would make a good fire. I didn’t say anything to Millie, but went out and split an armful of it into kindling, picked up a couple of pine knots, and took it into the kitchen. Smoke was still pouring from the stove, and Millie was jawing away to herself about it. She didn’t pay any attention to me until I’d put the wood in the wood box and was taking the milk bucket down from the pantry shelf. Then she said, “Leave be! Thomas don’t want the milking done afore six o’clock. I’ll take care of that; you fetch the swill to the sow with the new litter. And take heed you don’t tromp on none of them little pigs.”

I took the swill bucket from under the sink. It was full almost to the brim with dishwater, and I was careful not to slop a drop of it until I was outside the summer kitchen. When I opened the barn doors, the bay mare whinnied for her breakfast, but the old buckskin snaked his head out over the half-door and snapped at me as I passed his stall. His teeth didn’t miss my shoulder by more than half an inch. I had trouble not to dodge away from him, but I didn’t, and by the time I got to the sow’s pen I had my mind made up about the way I was going to handle him.

It was only quarter of five, and if Grandfather didn’t want the milking done before six I’d have plenty of time. I worked just as fast as I could while I lugged water to the hogs in the barn cellar, measured them out a quart of corn apiece, cleaned the tie-up, and climbed the mow to pitch down hay for the horses. Then I cleaned the mare’s stall, bedded it with loose chaff from the barn floor, and fed her, but I didn’t go near the buckskin. The night before, Millie had told me to give the horses bran, but that morning I gave the bay mare whole corn. I wanted to be sure the buckskin would hear her chewing it. I currycombed and brushed her while she ate, and listened to him stamping, snorting, and raking his teeth across the timbers of his stall.

When the mare was almost finished with her corn, and when the old buckskin was nearly frantic, I slipped out of her stall with the currycomb in my hand, took his bridle down from its spike, and went toward his stall door. As his head came shooting out over the half-door, it looked like the pictures of a Chinese dragon. I swung the bridle in front of my face, just the way Grandfather had but, with the other hand, I slipped the currycomb up in front of the blinder. The buckskin bit it so hard that he turned down a whole row of the sharp teeth, then snorted, and snapped three times more in quick succession. I didn’t swing the currycomb at him, but each time I was careful to see that it was where he’d bump his lips or teeth against it. After the third bump, he whirled, crowded his head into the far corner of the stall, and stood dancing.

I’d expected him to act just the way he had with Grandfather, and was inside the stall door by the time he had his head in the corner. Then I was lucky. With Grandfather, he’d gone into the corner with his head high and his back straight. With me, he went with his head low and his back humped. When I was only eight years old Father had taught me to look out for flying heels when a horse got into that position. And he’d taught me that the closer I was to them when they flew, the less I’d get hurt. Without ever stopping to figure it out, I jumped to the side of the buckskin’s rump, and swung the currycomb up hard from my knee. It caught him on the near hock as his leg flew past my hip, and it caught him hard. He snorted, swung his rump toward me, and kicked again. That time I didn’t try to hide the currycomb, but smashed it hard against his hock as the legs came up.

If I’d misguessed him, and he was really a bad horse, I could be in plenty of trouble, and I knew it. I had to keep telling myself so, as I crowded in against him with the currycomb ready to swing. If he ever found out he could scare me I’d never be able to handle him, and I knew he had his mind made up to find out. His head swung toward me, with his nostrils opened to the size of coffee cups, his ears back, and white showing around his eyes. Then he began to crowd. The solid wall was only two feet from my back. If I tried to dodge out, his heels would certainly catch me before I could get to the door, and I could only use the currycomb if I was in close. If I went toward his head, no currycomb could stop him from tearing me to pieces with his teeth. There was only one thing I could do: I had to scare him before he knew he’d scared me.

If it had taken me a tenth as long to think it as to tell it, I might have been killed, but it didn’t. I stayed tight against his rump and, the second he began crowding me toward the wall, I started beating a tattoo on his belly with the sharp teeth of the currycomb. His back hunched against the bite of the comb, every muscle in his body was pulled as tight as a fiddlestring, and he kept crowding until I could see the wall just behind my shoulder. Then, with a half snort, half groan, the wind went out of him—just as it does with a toy balloon that has had a hole poked in it. He didn’t dance, but moved over against the far wall and stood, sulking and watching me out of the corner of his eye.

I felt a little trembly all over as I moved up to the buckskin’s head. He flung it high, with his nose poked nearly to the ceiling. I could have jumped and made a grab for his under lip but, if I had, he might have bitten my hand. Instead, I swung the currycomb up where he could get a good look at it, and his muzzle came part way down. As soon as I’d slipped a thumb in behind his front teeth, he brought his head the rest of the way down and let me put the bridle on. After I’d buckled the cheek strap, I scratched his forehead with my fingers, and looked back along his body. A nerve twitched once or twice in his shoulder, but he wasn’t shivering the way he had after Grandfather hit him with the bridle. I soft-talked him a little, and kept on scratching his forehead until his ears came up. Then I went for the rest of the harness and put it on. The old horse never moved an inch until the last buckle was fastened.

After I’d led him around the stall a few times, I unharnessed him and fed him. Though I knew a horse got more good from his grain if he’d eaten his hay first, I brought the bran as soon as I had the harness hung up, then curried and brushed him as he ate. He winced a little when I brushed over the spot on his belly where I’d tattooed him with the currycomb, but his ears stayed up and he didn’t lift a foot. I thought it might be getting close to six o’clock, so I took the currycomb to the carriage house, straightened the bent teeth, put it back in the barn, and went to the house.

Grandfather was nowhere in sight, but Millie was slicing boiled potatoes into an iron frying pan on the stove. The kitchen was clear of smoke, and a red glow was coming from the open front of the stove. I took the milk bucket down from the pantry shelf, and asked, “Is it time to milk yet?”

Instead of answering, Millie turned toward me and looked straight into my eyes with her mouth clamped together tight. “What was you up to with the yella colt?” she asked.

“He doesn’t like currycombing,” was all I said.

She didn’t look away from my eyes, and she didn’t change the expression on her face. “Better stay away from him,” she said. “He devilish near killed a couple of hired hands that tried to get smart with him. Thomas is the only one can handle him.”

I kept looking right at her, and said, “I’m not going to get smart with him, and he’s not going to get smart with me. How much milk do you want me to bring to the house?”

“A quart’s enough. That maple you fetched in burns pretty good. Breakfast’ll be ready when you’re done milking.” Her voice wasn’t soft, but there wasn’t any crabbiness in it.

When I went back into the barn, the yella colt shot his head out over the half-door. His ears were pinned back, he snorted when he saw who it was, and he snapped, but it was just to let off steam. His teeth whacked together like trap springs, but his muzzle only jerked a few inches in my direction. So he would know I wasn’t afraid of him, I went right up close, but I had the milk bucket all ready to swing if I needed it. I didn’t. He drew his head back in, and picked up a mouthful of hay as if there had been no one within a mile.

With all Millie’s having told me the night before that the Holstein heifer would kick the daylights out of me, she didn’t raise a foot when I milked her. And if she had a sore teat I didn’t find it. As soon as the milk began singing in the bottom of the bucket, three cats showed up from somewhere, and Old Bess came into the tie-up and sat watching me. I aimed a stream of milk at her head, the way I used to do with our dog in Colorado, but she didn’t know about opening her mouth to catch it. She just sat there, wagging her tail and licking the milk off her lips with her tongue. When I’d stripped the last drops, I found an old pan and filled it with warm milk for her and the cats.

Though I hadn’t seen it, I knew the Holstein had a calf in the sheep barn. I’d heard it bawl, and she had stood at the doorway bellowing when we’d brought the cows in the night before. Millie had taken the calf’s supper down to it while I had been watering the hogs in the barn cellar. As soon as I’d fed Bess and the cats, I took the rest of the milk and started to the sheep barn. I was just to the doorway when Grandfather hollered from behind me, “Stay out of there! Mind what you’re doing!” When I looked around, he was coming across the barnyard toward me as fast as he could walk. “Who told you to feed that calf?” he asked me as he got closer.

“Nobody,” I said, “but I heard Millie come down and feed it last night, and this morning she told me she only wanted a quart of milk at the house.”

“Didn’t she tell you to mind the spider web?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Rattle-brained girl!” he snapped out, and pushed between me and the doorway. Its frame was made of heavy oak logs, and the open door sagged on thick rawhide hinges. Grandfather put a hand against each of the upright logs, peeked into the darkness of the old barn, and his voice was only a whisper when he said, “Mark it, Ralphie; the all-fired great spider web acrost the top half the inside doorway. Been there nigh onto three weeks. The old spider’ll be hatching out her brood pretty quick now. You have to scooch down low a-going in. I was scairt you was going to blunder into it and smash it all to smithereens.”

The sheep barn was dug back into the hillside. The roof was of poles with hay and earth over them, and the floor was solid packed clay that was as hard as stone. As we ducked under the spider web and my eyes became used to the dimness, I could see a spotted calf, three or four weeks old, penned in one corner of the old barn. A chipped white porcelain bucket was nailed inside the fencing of the pen, and the calf was butting it with his head. So he wouldn’t slop the milk, I climbed the fence, straddled his neck, and poured all but a quart of it into the chipped bucket. Then I slipped two fingers into his mouth, for teats, and poked his nose into the warm milk. I’d almost forgotten about Grandfather’s being there till he asked, “Who learned you how to do that?”

“Father, I guess. It seems as if I’ve always known it.”

“Well, it’s more’n I thought you knowed, Ralphie. You done it like a real farmer.”

“I am a real farmer,” I told him. “I just don’t know much about mowing with a hand scythe.”

“Hmfff! Don’t know nothing about bees or dressing or hay land neither! Strawb’ries and tomatoes! Who ever heard of a farmer that couldn’t swing a snath and scythe? Only fit way to mow a field; ’cepting a man can’t find hired hands with gumption enough to do an honest day’s work for a dollar. You seen how that tarnal mowing machine hogs down the grass and leaves half of it laying flat in the field.”

“It wouldn’t if it was fixed up in good shape.”

“Don’t tell me!” Grandfather shouted so loud that the calf let go of my fingers. “Ain’t a machine made that will do ary job as good as a man can do it by hand if he’s got a spark of gumption in him. Wastin’! Wastin’! Lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing farmers nowadays; run into debt for a parcel of fancy machines that ain’t worth a tinker, and go broke afore ever they get ’em paid for.”

“Father always said that good machinery would pay for itself ten times over.”

“Father said! Father said! What in time and tarnation did Charlie know ’bout farming anyways? Mill hand, wa’n’t he, whenst Mary wed him?
My
father took this farm up from the wilderness, cut the timber, pulled the stumps, sot up the stonewalls and cleared the fields, and he didn’t have nothing ’cepting his own two hands, a homemade plow, and a yoke of oxen. Hosses! Hosses! Ain’t a hoss a-living can hold a candle to a Durham ox. Why I recollect . . . ”