Pamela Morsi (8 page)

The barn was a small building, one side used exclusively for hay storage. The stalls were constructed beneath a south overhang, protected from bad weather on three sides. The animals were free to wander in the fenced corral that adjoined the area.

Rans didn’t mind the jenny at all. He had worked with mules since he was old enough to hold a stick and knew them to be disagreeable and stubborn.

The Texas saddle pony, however, didn’t give any hints as to what he was thinking. He might be as placid as pie or ready to take a hunk of flesh out of Rans’s shoulder. There had never been such a fine horse in these mountains, and there was no understanding of how high-strung he was.

Rans screwed up his courage and tended the animal If his hands trembled slightly as he laid the hay out in the trough, nobody would ever know. And if he had winced and caught his breath when the big horse nervously
sidestepped, he would never have to admit it.

For his valor and perseverance, Rans hadn’t expected any thanks or praise. Somehow that sort of thing never came his way. But he hadn’t imagined that faultfinding and ingratitude would be his wages.

“What the devil are you doing?”

Moss Collier’s voice was not harsh, but Rans thought it accusatory.

“I’m feeding your horse,” he answered, immediately defensive.

“You’re feeding him,” Moss said impatiently. “Have you watered him?”

“I … I was going to do that next,” Rans insisted.

“You don’t water a fine saddle horse
after
a feed,” Collier told him. “That’ll give even an old plowing nag the colic.”

He grabbed the horse’s mane and pulled his head away from the feed trough.

“Colic can kill a horse,” the man said. “If you don’t know anything about the animals, then stay away from them,”

Rans felt the sting of embarrassment stain his cheeks. If Eulie’s new husband had said, “You’re stupid!” he couldn’t have felt more humiliated.

Moss Collier slipped a rope around Red Tex’s neck. He opened the gate and led the big horse out. The jenny followed as they made their way down the slope toward the river. Rans trailed after them, his hands in his pockets, silent and angry.

A small trail was worn into the ground near the river where for countless years animals, both wild and domestic, had easily gained access to the water. The horse and mule dipped their heads eagerly to have
their fill. Moss Collier stood beside Red Tex, stroking and patting the horse proudly. As if, Rans thought unkindly, drinking water were some kind of special trick only a fine saddle horse could manage.

Rans bent down and perused the ground around him for a few minutes until he found a nice flat round stone. He wiped the dirt from it with his thumb and forefinger testing it for smoothness. It suited him perfectly. He rose to his feet and, with a sideways sling about waist-high, he sent it sailing across the water.

Plop … plop … plop.
Three times it grazed the water before dropping in.

The old jenny didn’t even notice. But the big red horse jerked his head up and skittered back away from the water.

“What the devil are you doing?” Collier hollered at him as he moved to quiet the animal.

“Sorry,” Rans said, guarding his grin with a mask of innocence.

He felt a good deal better after watching the man’s efforts to quiet the spooked horse. When Red Tex was drinking again, Rans sided up next to Collier.

“Most folks just let their animals roam. Then they can get their own grass and water as they need it,” he said.

The man didn’t even bother to look his way.”
Most folks
don’t own any animals as valuable as Red Tex. He gets plenty of spring grass, some cowpeas and shock, and a bucket of oats every day.”

Rans tried to hide his surprise. No work animals with which he’d been familiar ever ate so good. On the old place that they’d sharecropped for his father, any oats or cowpeas that they’d managed to harvest would
have been next seen in the dinner plates of him and his sisters.

But Rans had already discovered that on Moss Collier’s place, a person could live on store-bought canned peaches. That was amazing. Rans had never tasted anything so fine in his life. But he flatly refused to feel beholden about it. Moss Collier had opened up those peaches, he assured himself, because he’d wanted to sweeten up his new bride. It had obviously worked. When he’d wandered back to the place and seen the light in the kitchen, he’d thought his sister was still cleaning.

He’d only gotten one glimpse, but it was surely an eyeful. Moss Collier may not have wanted to marry Eulie, but he’d overcome any contempt for her in a sure-enough hurry.

But that was the way of things, at least as far as Rans had observed. Men would do just about anything to please a pretty girl. Of course, his sister Eulie was not what Rans would describe as a pretty girl. However, he suspected a fellow could never judge fairly concerning his own sister.

As long as she suited Moss Collier, then, Eulie had a chance of making a home here for herself and the girls. Rans was not convinced that a home here would suit him at all.

Once the animals were watered, Collier walked them back up to the corral. Rans followed and watched the man feed the saddle horse and pen him before turning his attention to the jenny.

“You ain’t going to work the horse in the fields?”

The man looked up then, his expression disbelieving.

“The mule pulls the plow,” he answered, almost angrily. “Red Tex is a saddle animal.”

Rans was genuinely curious.

“You mean the horse don’t work at all?” he asked.

“He works cattle,” Collier answered.

“Cattle?”

Rans was genuinely surprised. The only cattle he was at all familiar with were Jersey milk cows. But he knew enough about the animals to realize that they required open space and acres of grass. Nobody raised cattle on steep, wooded upland farm.

“You’ve got cattle?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Moss Collier replied. There was bitterness in his tone. “Not yet, but someday I will.”

Rans in no way understood the man’s meaning.

“Well, if I were you,” he told Collier in a superior and advisory tone. “I’d get rid of a horse that eats that good and don’t work a lick.”

It was tried and true advice. Rans knew that nearly every man in the Sweetwood would agree with him.

From his stony expression, Moss Collier apparently did not.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with my animals,” he said. “I don’t suspect you’ve had that much experience with livestock.”

Rans felt as if he’d been slapped. To say he was unfamiliar with animals was to say that Rans was no man at all. Every farmer he’d ever worked for had mules. His father, of course, had never owned any animals. Moss Collier was obviously referring to that. His father had basically never owned anything. The clothes on his back were most likely from charity and the food on his table a gift from his wife and children.

Eulie had always tried to make it out that Virgil Toby was sickly and delicate. That he was troubled and infirm. That was why he didn’t work much.

That was true as far as it went, but Rans was very aware that most of his father’s sickliness came out of a corn liquor jug. His inability to work was more from pure laziness than a frailty of health. He sent his children out into the fields with hunger still gnawing at their bellies while he lay around the shack sucking up strong drink and whining about not having more. He’d watched his wife work herself into an early grave, and then he’d moaned and wept in grief at losing her.

It was Eulie’s contention that their father had pined away for love of his wife. It was Rans’s belief that too much whiskey had killed him. And his father’s swollen gut and yellow-tinged eyeballs suggested that he was right.

A son could not respect a father like that. And Rans had no respect for Virgil Toby. When he thought about it, and that was more often than was good for him, he thought he despised Virgil Toby. He hated him.

What was so repellent in his father was even more so in himself.

Like father, like son.

That was the old saying. Rans feared that there was truth in it. Even if there was not, he knew that when men looked at him, they didn’t see a hardworking, determined young fellow. They saw the boy of that lazy, worthless Virgil Toby. Rans wanted to be treated like a man, he wanted to be treated like his own man.

Moss Collier didn’t treat him like a man at all.

After the mistake about the saddle horse, Rans
kept his distance, waiting for a task of which he was more certain.

When Eulie’s husband began to harness the jenny, he walked over to help. Mr. Leight always appreciated an extra pair of hands.

“Stand back,” Collier told him. “She’s liable to kick you.”

“I was going to hand you the jackstrap,” Rans said.

“Just stay back,” he insisted. “This old jenny is a one-man mule for certain.”

Rans did move back then, all the way to the fence—not because he was cautious of the mule, but because he was cautious of the man. He leaned in studied indolence against the railing, his eyes narrowed in displeasure. To have his help refused was a slight he could hardly bear. If he was not allowed to pull his weight here, he would have to leave. A horse that didn’t work should not be tolerated. And a man that wouldn’t work could not be. Rans could never take sustenance from a man’s table without earning his share.

Leaving, he knew well, was an easy thing to decide to do but a difficult one to have come to pass. The truth came to him repeatedly when, like last night, he would take off in a fit of anger. There was no real hope of leaving without planning. A man required a poke of needments, victuals for the trip, a sample of coin, and a destination in mind.

Rans had none of these.

He had been so hopeful about Mr. Leight. Bug, as he was called by most in the Sweetwood, was a very patient, thoughtful fellow. He appreciated hard work and knew an able hand when he saw one. It was Leight who first gave Rans hope that a man could indeed be
respected for what he did rather than who he was. And Bug’s quiet good nature was so unshakable that the worst of Rans’s moods bothered him not at all.

Rans worked for room and board, which he was careful and conscientious to earn every day.

When Clara came to cook for them, well, things just got better. Mr. Leight was a bit shy with her at first, seeming a bit uncomfortable about having a woman in the house. And Clara was a little flustered herself, blushing every time the man spoke to her. That day early in the spring when he’d picked a handful of wildflowers by the fence row to “bring some color to the cabin,” Clara had become all honey-eyed and sweet-voiced about it.

Rans couldn’t have been more pleased. Bug was a fine fellow, and Clara could do no better than a steady, dependable man who obviously adored her and respected her brother.

Unfortunately, Eulie didn’t see it that way.

Moss Collier began to lead the jenny out of the enclosure, and Rans followed.

The man turned abruptly and looked at him.

Rans spoke up first.

“You going to plow some before that east rain gets here?”

Collier’s brow furrowed as he answered. “That’s what I intended.”

“It sounds like a good idea,” Rans agreed, a bit loftily. “We’d better get at it.”

“You haven’t even had your breakfast,” the man said.

Rans shrugged. “I’ll grab a biscuit and meet you in the field.”

Collier hesitated, his expression one of rather obvious discomfiture. “Perhaps you’d better stay here and help your sister,” he said. “She told me that she’d be trying to expand the garden today.”

Rans stood still as a stone. The vegetable garden was women’s work. He was being relegated to being no more a hand on this place than one of his sisters.

Without another word, Rans turned and began walking away.

“I got to get out of here,” he muttered to himself determinedly. “Some way, somehow, I got to get out of here.”

E
ULIE
was determined that no one and nothing was going to ruin their first day together as a family on the farm. Not that anyone was going to make it easy for her. Rans was in a bad temper. Minnie was in a pout. The twins kept getting distracted by all the new things around them. And Clara kept looking at her as if she’d grown two heads.

“Are you sure you want to do this today?” Clara asked her. “If you aren’t … aren’t well and need to rest …”

“Rest? In the best part of the day?” Eulie couldn’t imagine what her sister was thinking about.

The only normal enthusiasm that Eulie encountered was that of Old Hound, who was at her heels every minute and appeared to be delighted that she was here.

Unfortunately, dogs are not particularly adept at gardening.

The vegetable plot was on the south slope near the kitchen, where it easily drained into the river below. It was surrounded by a split-rail fence, which was useless for keeping out rabbits or fowl, but hogs and cattle wouldn’t wander through it at least. Greens were
already coming out of the ground. It was late to be adding to the planting, and potatoes put down after Easter were considered bad luck. But Eulie was going to add some limas, beets and turnips, a row of salsify, and some okra. She wouldn’t waste her time with onion or carrots. Both grew freely in the woods and any seed crop planted was more than likely to cross with its wild cousin and come in spindly and poor.

Eulie was determined to double the area, though the hillside steepened less gradually on the southeast corner. She feared the heavy runoff from that spot would render it mostly useless. Maybe she could build it up and make it a squash or pumpkin hill.

The husband-man had left her brother here to help her, and Eulie saw that as a kindness indeed. He knew she’d need help moving those fence posts, and Rans, who was in another of his bad tempers, took on the job with an angry determination. A worm fence was merely a series of rails in two sizes stacked upon each other at an angle. It required more sweat than skill, but it was the consensus of the mountains that it had to be “horse-high, bull-strong and pig-tight.” The biggest job was moving and redigging the ground rails. Rans manfully put himself to the task.

Eulie smiled at the sight of her brother at work. It was pleasing to her in a way that none else could know. Without any indication of his reasoning to anyone, the husband-man had Rans stay back from the plowing. Clearly he was growing fond of her. And the favor was as sweet to her heart as the nectar of canned peaches. Eulie happily anticipated their future together: Mr. and Mrs. Moss Collier of Barnes Ridge Farm.

The youngers would grow up here on this place with
plenty to eat and a dependable roof over their heads. They would be clean every day and their clothes well mended. She would make such a wonderful home that the husband-man would be forever grateful to her. And they would all be so happy together from now on.

The thought cheered her so much that she began to hum as she worked.

Yes, it would be wonderful, perfect. Maybe she could plant a few posies around the porch and they could get a cow. The Tobys would all be together again and there would be big family picnics and celebrations and babies.

That thought stopped her momentarily. The husband-man said there would be no more kisses. There would be no babies. It was probably not right for a wife to wish that her husband was a liar. But at that moment, Eulie hoped that at the very least he was mistaken.

He said he wanted to get away from this place. He called it a prison. Eulie looked around her at the cabin, the outbuildings, and the river all nestled so lovely within the tall woods around them. How could anyone ever bear to leave, let alone wish for it? Eulie shook her head. Surely he did not mean that. Surely he did not truly want to get away.

“Look! Look what we found!” The twins were coming from the tack shed, their hands full of harness.

Minnie got there first, and her curiosity turned immediately to excitement.

“It’s for a pony cart!” she cried delightedly. “Mrs. Pierce said I should have a pony cart.”

Clara examined it next and shook her head at her younger sister. “It’s too small to harness a pony. See,
the girth strap is much too short. It must be for a dog or goat.”

“Do you think they have a sulky?” Nora May asked.

“We wouldn’t be too big to ride in a sulky,” Cora Fay assured them both quickly.

“We could strap this on the dog,” Rans said, examining the long brown leather lines.

“To the dog?” Cora Fay and Nora May glanced at each other.

“That dog couldn’t pull us in a sulky,” one said.

“That’s because you nasty Toby children are not tiny and precious like me,” Minnie told them, more than a hint of taunting in her voice.

Rans looked at his youngest sister with disgusted disapproval. “I hadn’t noticed you being tiny and precious,” he said. “More like stumpy and annoying.”

Minnie immediately began to cry. But rather than sobbing and tears, it was more like screaming and wails.

“For heaven’s sake, Minnie!” Clara protested.

“Hush up, right now!” Eulie scolded.

Words had no effect.

“Ignore her,” Rans suggested.

It was easier said than done.

“We could use this to harness the dog up to the wheel-hoe,” Rans told Eulie. “It would make breaking the new ground a lot easier.”

It sounded like a good idea, but Eulie had never heard of such.

“The dog won’t know anything about plowing,” she said.

“What’s to know?” Rans answered loudly, attempting to be heard over his youngest sister’s continued
lamentation. “Get the plow headed in the right direction and have somebody lead him.”

Eulie glanced down at the happy, enthusiastic old hound who was even now sniffing eagerly at the harness, and wondered if they were about to do the poor dog a tremendous disservice.

“Well, they’d be no harm in trying,” she conceded as she squatted down, patting her knee and calling the dog to her.

Old Hound sided up eagerly and made no complaint as she attempted to fit the headpiece on his long brown muzzle. The only difficulty proved to be the slobbering tongue that he kept using to lick her. The girth strap around his middle fitted only in the last notch, but they were able to secure it reasonably well. Although obviously made to be attached to some sort of vehicle, the fastenings were quite low and easily joined to the outside portion of the wheel-hoe’s axle.

“This is going to work great,” her brother assured her. “We’ll be able to get this new ground broken in half the rime at least.”

Her sister, Clara, remained a little skeptical. “The dog won’t know the first thing about plowing a straight furrow.”

Eulie was oblivious to that concern. The youngers were all delighted and excited. It was the first genuine enthusiasm that had been shown since their arrival at their new home, and Eulie wasn’t about to waste it.

“We’ll have to try out different hands,” she told them. “Since we don’t have any idea who will be best able to handle our new plow dog, we’ll need to give everyone a chance to drive him.”

Little Minnie ceased her caterwauling and began to
clap her hands and squeal with delight. The twins shared a glance of unveiled excitement. Even Rans looked eager. Clara offered her a surreptitious wink in congratulation on the brilliance of her plan.

It would be fun, they could enjoy it together, and whether the dog was truly helpful or not, the pleasure of it would make the work go faster. Beyond the din of the spirited activity around her, Eulie heard the angry dissenting voice.

“Stop that! Stop that right now!”

Glancing up, Eulie saw Uncle Jeptha at the edge of the kitchen stone path. His face was red with fury, and he was shaking his fist at her.

“Get that harness off that dog!” he hollered. “Get it off!”

All around her the youngers had quieted.

“That harness belongs to me, and it ain’t for hitching no hound to a plow.”

The dog had begun to wag his tail and was tugging to pull himself away, jerking the wheel-hoe in such a way that it nearly came crashing to the ground.

Cora Fay knelt and held the dog’s head. Rans gripped the handle and used his foot to press the blade securely into the ground.

“He’s going to get us!” Minnie warned with a loud wail.

Eulie had no choice but to see what the old man wanted. He was obviously very angry about something. Undoubtedly, she assured herself, he didn’t understand what they were doing and how harmless and inventive it was.

Eulie made her way carefully across the neat little garden rows already sprouting green and through the
rickety slat gate. She went up the slope toward the kitchen smiling, hopeful, in the face of the man’s undisguised irritation.

“What is it, Uncle Jeptha?” she asked as she approached. “Do you need something?”

The old cripple’s eyes were cold with fury. “That goat harness belongs to me. I didn’t say you could borrow it. So you tell those children to get it off that dadgummed dog this instant!”

Eulie gave him what she hoped was a serene, reassuring smile and spoke softly.

“You really shouldn’t curse, Uncle Jeptha,” she said. “It’s a bad example in front of the children and a true danger to the purity of your soul.”

“Curse!” His voice was incredulous. “Hail, wire and creation, gal, I know words so bad they’d curl your hair, and I ain’t said nary a one.”

Eulie decided not to argue the point. The old man was narrow-eyed and spoiling for a fight. She was determined not to give him one.

“The children found the harness in the tack room,” she told him. “It fits the dog very well and we thought we might get Old Hound to help us with the plowing.”

“A dog cain’t do plowing!” he assured her adamantly. “And that harness belongs to me. It’s not for that.”

“What is it for?”

The man seemed momentarily nonplussed before he answered her. “Moss bought it with a goat trained to pull my cart. I was supposed to use it to take me places I wanted to go.”

Eulie was puzzled. “You never go anyplace,” she said.

“Just so,” Uncle Jeptha replied.

A silence ensued where Eulie expected him to explain. The man was almost rigid with anger as he sat straight and tall, chin high and shoulders back in the low, narrow cart.

Now that he was no longer yelling, the children had become distracted. Rans had moved away from the hitched-up dog to take up a roughhouse game of tag with Little Minnie.

Clara was watching them, laughing at the antics as Rans would almost let the little girl catch him and then scurry away just out of reach. The twins apparently decided that they could best be of assistance to Eulie and were running up the slope toward her and Uncle Jeptha.

“You should come help us with the dog,” Cora Fay called out to him.

“The little harness fit him just perfectly,” Nora May said. “Do you have a sulky somewhere?”

Eulie felt the change in demeanor of the man beside her. He was obviously still very annoyed, but she knew from her own experience how hard it was to maintain a stern countenance in the face of the genuine sweetness of her twin sisters.

The two plopped down on their knees on the ground beside the amputee cart. Their nearness seemed to starde the older man, and Eulie wondered how long it had been since he had been truly close to anyone.

When Uncle Jeptha continued not to speak, Eulie posed a question.

“What happened to the goat?” she asked.

He looked up at her, surprised.

“A goat!” Nora May looked delightedly into the eyes of her twin.

“A goat pulling a sulky would be even better than a dog,” Cora Fay agreed.

“There ain’t no sulky,” Uncle Jeptha told them. “The harness is to pull this cart. And the dang goat, why Moss got rid of it ages ago. It has long since been boiled down to soap.”

The children let that reality soak in for a moment but were not deterred by it.

“Old Hound could pull your cart,” Cora Fay said.

“He’s plenty big enough,” her twin agreed.

“That dog ain’t been trained to pull nothing,” Uncle Jeptha answered with annoyance. “He’s a hunting dog.”

“Is he a good one?” Eulie asked.

“Well, sure he is,” Uncle Jeptha man replied. “Moss wouldn’t have nothing less.”

“Then if he’s smart enough to hunt,” Eulie told him, her glance taking in the girls as well. “He’s got to be smart enough to pull a plow … or a cart.”

Uncle Jeptha shook his head. “You’ll never get him to pull anything.”

Eulie nodded. “That’s why we need your help,” she said. “You could train him to help.”

“Yes! Yes!” the twins agreed. “You could train him.”

“Why would I want to do that?” he asked her.

Eulie thought about her answer for a long moment.

The twins’ eyes were wide with unconditional generosity and innocence that was infinitely more compelling than any words could ever be.

“Why should you help us?” Eulie repeated. “Because we need it and because you can.”

At that moment a rabbit took the opportunity to pass through the edge of the woods within sight of the
garden. Old Hound howled for the chase and took off after him, overturning the plow he was hitched to and dragging it with sad results across both the untilled ground and the fledgling new plants of the original garden.

Cries of shock and horror erupted from every voice.

“Stop! Stop!” Eulie begged the animal at the top of her lungs.

He did, finally, after scampering beneath the bottom fence rail, only to be brought up short when the plow wedged itself firmly between the posts.

The dog continued to bark and jerk at the harness to which he was attached. They all surveyed the extensive damage in silence. Beans trampled, potatoes uprooted, the garden now had a nasty gash cut right through its center.

Eulie swallowed the lump in her throat. The husband-man would not be pleased with this day’s work, either, she thought.

She turned back to Uncle Jeptha and determinedly forced a smile to her lips.

“Well at least now we know for sure that he’s strong enough to pull it,” she said.