Harvest Home (21 page)

In the evening, the weather remaining fine, we would barbecue steaks on the terrace, often joined by Worthy Pettinger, for whom Beth and I decided Kate was developing a strong attachment.

Viewed in the light of what occurred later, it was a fool’s paradise, but I could not have known that then. Fool’s paradise in those weeks was still Heart’s Desire, and it seemed nothing could possibly happen to spoil the idyll of our new existence. Above all, and very real, was a profound sense of belonging not only to my family but to the villagers, to the countryside, and, though I did not till it, to the land.

Yet while I worked about the house and at my easel, the grisly souvenir in the hollow tree remained in my thoughts, that and the “gray ghost,” as I had come to regard that other, even more puzzling apparition. If I failed to fathom the unfathomable, it was perhaps not so much due to my lack of mental agility as that I did not feel I could confide my thoughts to anyone. I did not want to tell anyone I had been seeing ghosts, nor did I want people saying I was a fool. Whatever I said, and to whom, it was bound to be repeated, and I hated the thought of these farmer people thinking I was as moon mad as they, and as superstitious.

There were, however, two with whom I was anxious to talk: Robert Dodd and Jack Stump. Robert, with Maggie, was out of town—visiting his university, with which he kept up considerable contact. And the peddler had not as yet finished his territory circuit, for nowhere in the village was his tin-pan clatter to be heard, and I listened in vain.

The only other shadow darkening my existence at that period was the boy, Worthy Pettinger. In its quiet but firm way, the village was adamant on the subject of his “accepting the honor,” as the phrase was couched. Worthy must and would be the Young Lord in the Corn Play. Though he came regularly to our house after school to do chores, he was now invariably late, invariably offhand, and, when I asked him what was troubling him, invariably reticent.

It was hard to know what to do; how could we help when we didn’t really know what the problem was? My own assessment was that the boy’s dark distress stemmed from a reluctance to commit himself to Cornwall Coombe for a seven-year tenure as Harvest Lord—no matter what honors or wealth accrued from this—when it was his desire to be quit of village encumbrances and old-fashioned ways. Who could blame him for being “newfangled”? But if the father continued to hold to his parochial attitude, forcing him to “accept the honor,” there seemed little to be done.

One noontime, having left Worthy using a chain saw on the uprooted tree, I decided to pay a visit to the Hookes. I found the sketch I had done of Sophie at the Widow’s Sunday sociable, put it in a little frame I dug out of a box, and drove out to the Hooke farm.

When I got there, I left the car on the road and walked down the drive circling the house, having learned that the back door was where Cornwall Coombe folk paid weekday calls. Approaching the open Dutch door at the kitchen steps, I was greeted by a flying object, a great squawking feathered projectile, which came flying through the opening. I watched the chicken land, then, wings flapping, run off into a patch of nasturtiums. In another moment, Justin’s smiling face appeared.

“Come in, come in,” he said heartily, reaching to shake my hand and opening the lower half of the door for me.

“Anybody home beside the chickens?” I asked, mounting the steps.

“Tossing a hen through the door brings good luck. Sophie, look who’s here.” Sophie rose from the table where she had been working on some ledgers and offered me a cup of coffee. When she had moved the ledgers aside and set the cup on the table, I presented her with my gift. She took the package and looked from me to it and back again.

“Go ahead, Sophie,” Justin urged, “open it.”

A little gasp escaped her lips as she undid the paper and saw the sketch under the glass. She looked at me gratefully. “Nobody ever drew me before,” she said simply.

Justin came around the table to see. “Why, it’s Sophie to the life.” He pulled out a chair for me to sit. I put sugar in my coffee, and cream from the pitcher Sophie had brought from the refrigerator. Justin asked where she would like the sketch hung.

“In the living room, I think.”

He went to find a hammer, and Sophie led me into the front room, where she picked out a spot for the drawing. “Sophie,” Justin said when he had tapped in a hook and hung the sketch, “take him and show him the upstairs. When you’ve done, Ned, come have a look around the place. I’ve got to get back to the men or they’ll be sitting on their hands.” He clumped down the hall in his heavy boots and Sophie preceded me up the stairs.

I glimpsed a crisp white bedroom with a large four-poster bed similar to the one Beth and I slept in. Sophie took me in and showed me the crocheted counterpane her grandmother had made, pointing out the fine workmanship. “It’s called popcorn stitch.” The room had a serene but solid look to it, with printed curtains at the window, and at the foot of the bed a blanket chest painted with flowers to match the curtains. When I admired it, she blushed, saying she had done it herself.

“You’re very talented, Sophie.”

“But not like you.” A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and she stepped to the window, looking down at the barnyard. A hole had been dug along a strip of lawn between the house and the cornfield, and beside it stood a young tree, ready for planting. Justin came with a shovel, bent to set in the tree. Sophie turned back and said, “Could I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I have my egg money put aside, and I was wondering— How much would you charge to do a painting?”

“I’d love to paint you, Sophie.”

“Not me. Justin. I’d like a picture to hang over the mantel while he’s still Harvest Lord.”

I said I thought that was a fine idea, and that I would be happy to execute the commission. “It’s the first I’ve had.” But I added that since I did not enjoy doing studio portraits, I would want to find a natural spot, revealing of his character, to pose Justin in. She grew more excited at the idea and asked when I might begin.

“Well—I’ve got some commitments I’ve got to finish up for my gallery in New York first.”

Her face clouded. “How soon could you start?”

Since it seemed important to her that I paint it while the Harvest Lord was still in office—so to speak—I said I would begin some preliminary sketches as soon as possible.

She brought me back downstairs and into the kitchen again where the ledgers lay stacked on the table.

“Do you keep the books, Sophie?”

“Oh, yes. That’s my part. Or
part
of my part. Someone has to keep track of where the money goes.” She showed me one of the books, the neat columns of figures in her fine hand, the accounts payable, and the accounts receivable, which were apparently nil until the corn was cut.

“They’ll fill up by Harvest Home,” I said.

She closed the ledger and rubbed the tips of her fingers lightly over the gold stampwork on the front. “Yes,” she said softly. Impulsively she reached for my hand. “We’re so glad you’ve come to live in Cornwall. You’re the first outsiders we’ve had, and it’s going to be nice knowing you, and Beth, and your little girl.” She thanked me again for the drawing and said she hoped I would stop by anytime.

“I’m often out this way,” I told her. “I’m doing a painting of the bridge.”

“The Lost Whistle? That should be lovely.” But I saw her face cloud at the mention of the bridge, as though the place had unpleasant associations for her.

“Something wrong with the bridge?” I asked.

“N-no.” She spun, looked at the table. “Gosh, I’ve left the cream out to spoil.” She took the pitcher and held it up. It was of porcelain, shaped like a cow. The tail curled up for a handle and the cream poured out through the mouth.

“It was a wedding present. It comes from Tiffany’s. In New York? It’s a very fine store.”

Her ingenuousness regarding Gotham jewelers made me want to smile. Still, I noticed how she had changed the subject from the Lost Whistle Bridge. I admired the pitcher, saying it reminded me of La Vache Qui Rit, the Laughing Cow cheese Beth used to buy at the deli in New York. She put the pitcher in the refrigerator and sat at the table. When I left, she had begun going over her books again.

“Don’t forget,” she called after me, “about the painting, I mean.”

I found Justin still planting. Like me, he had lost a tree to the storm, and this one was to replace it. Laying his shovel aside, he took a box filled with ashes and sprinkled them around the balled-up roots, explaining that they made good fertilizer. He picked up his spade again and shoveled in the rest of the earth, tamping the dirt with his foot and, from time to time sighting along the narrow trunk to make sure it was straight. When the work was done, he stepped back, looking up at the bare branches.

“There’s a tree for next spring. Ought to bloom just about Spring Festival time.” When I asked what kind of tree it was, he said a flowering pear tree. Then, taking me by the arm, he led me on a tour of his domain, an obvious source of pride.

First he showed me the “blessing stone,” a large block of quarried granite set into the foundation of the barn, with the date 1689 marking the year of its construction. The fine old boards had never been painted but through the years had aged to a beautiful patina. Painting a barn, he said, was a kind of sacrilege.

He took me to the toolshed where all the implements were also dated, giving one the sense that their makers had intended them to be passed on, so that in the distant future by these simple artifacts the past might be better understood.

We saw the pigpens, the hayloft, the stables, all with plenty of light and ventilation, and everything neat as a pin, spruce and straight and clean, with none of the slump and sag of other farms in the community. Looking over the place, I thought— jealously, perhaps—how much greater was the legacy of Cornwall Coombe than was ours, we who had lived half our lives in the city. Here, all around us, was the richness of Justin’s heritage. It was plain to see that there was no master here but himself, and that he knew it; knew, too, what his forebears had bestowed.

He pushed his hat back on his head and looked at me, anxious that I should appreciate his fields for both their beauty and their worth. As I had seen him do before, he stood with feet wide planted in the soil as if, like Antaeus, he renewed his strength by contact with the earth.

Often sober-looking and grave, he showed flashes of a youthful humor that I found ingratiating. There was a delight in him, as if he could not really believe his good fortune. He was easy to like, and I was secretly pleased that Sophie wanted me to paint him. When he returned to being a plain farmer, and Worthy had taken over as Harvest Lord, he and Sophie could look at the portrait on winter nights and tell their children how it had been back then.

“It looks like a good soil for crops,” I observed.

“Best around.” Cornwall Coombe would see a bountiful harvest this year, he said, speaking with a reverence I had seldom beheld in a man. Corn was easy to grow; all that was needed was rich earth, plenteous rains while the kernels formed in the husks, and the long slow heat of the August nights. He asked if I’d heard the Widow tell about hearing the corn grow.

I laughed and said yes. “One of her fancies, I guess.”

Justin shook his head. “It’s true. You can hear it. And it’s one of the best sounds in the world. Thirteen years ago, we had a Waste, and a man would have given his eyeteeth to hear the corn growing then.”

“A bad time—the Widow told me about it.”

“When you’ve seen one of those, you never forget it. A drought that leaves every stalk and leaf withered and the earth dry as dust. And if corn won’t grow, nothing will. It’s a terrible thing to see, bad enough when it happens to you, but worse when it happens to your neighbors, who maybe don’t have as much put by as you do. They get to depend on a fellow, Fred and Will and the others.” His brow contracted. “And she that brought the drought made them suffer.”

“She?”

“Grace Everdeen. As big a fool as God ever put in Cornwall. She’s the one who brought the last Great Waste.”

“How did Grace die?”

“She killed herself. As she ought to have.”

“How?”

“She threw herself off the Lost Whistle Bridge. Drowned.”

Sophie’s face clouding over the cream pitcher; no wonder the bridge had unhappy associations.

Changing the subject, Justin took pains to lay out for me the economics that welded the village into such a tightly knit community. The individual land titles dated as far back as the 1650s, the tracts having been portioned out by Gwydeon Penrose and the elders in accordance with the size of the family and the number of males available to farm the land. The acreage thus balanced, everyone worked it in communal fashion. Today, as then, when the corn was finally dried on the stalk, it would be harvested by hand, the ears loaded into wagons and taken over to the granary at Ledyardtown, where the wagons would be weighed with their contents, emptied, and weighed again; the farmers were paid for the difference in weight, their profits depending on the amount of land they tilled.

If the corn went to the granary, I asked, was it all husked first at the husking bee? Justin shook his head. “My fields will be the first to be harvested, and the corn from my south field will be the last to be husked. That’s what goes to the Grange for the husking bee.”

When I asked why this was so, he shrugged and said, “It’s always been that way.” He bent and pulled a weed and stuck it in the pocket of his overalls. “It’s part of the rights of the Lord.”

“And when Worthy becomes the Harvest Lord, then do the rights go to him?” Yes, he said. I replied that from my observations the idea seemed to have little appeal for Worthy Pettinger. Justin’s brow contracted again. “He’s got no choice in the matter. He’s been chosen.”

“By Missy.”

“Chosen,” he repeated stolidly. “Worthy’s just got too darn many modern ideas. He doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

“You’ve been lucky.”

“Sure have. I got my farm and I got Sophie and I’ve been Harvest Lord. Maybe that’s not so much to you, but it’s a lot for me.”