by Thomas Tryon
“How’s your family?” she asked, pursuing these small homely details.
“Fine.” I noticed her hands, large working hands, yet marked by their own simple grace, shapely, tapering fingers and smooth oval nails. “Except for Kate—she’s been having asthma attacks.”
“I know. Asthma.” She spoke the word sharply, marking such a condition with her personal disdain. “That child oughtn’t to have asthma.” She took out the buns and set them on a plate before me. “Help yourself.” Her nimble fingers separated the small harvest of herbs in the basket, tying them in bunches and hanging them from nails set into the edge of a shelf over the sink. Everywhere were jars and other containers, filled with various herbs, stalks, blossoms, seeds—what appeared to be an entire pharmacopoeia of country cures. “What’s that used for?” I inquired, sniffing at the kettle on the stove which gave off an aromatic, almost exotic essence.
“For what ails you.”
I wondered if she was bottling the concoction to sell at the fair, medicine-show style. As though reading my mind, she explained that she did a satisfactory back-door business; hardly a soul in the village didn’t stop by one time or another for one of her herbal infusions.
Her eye fell on my sketchbook. “How’s the paintin’ comin’?” I assured her I was working hard at it, and had a New York gallery swindled into handling my work.
“You any good?”
“Probably not.”
“You’re a liar.” She beamed behind her glasses. “Let me see.” She leafed through the book, murmuring approval; then uttered a little gasp as her hand flew to her breast. I saw she had come upon the page of tombstones I had drawn yesterday. “My, my, ’course you’re good. Dear me. Clemmon’s stone.” Gazing at the rendering of the grave marker, she seemed a trifle overwrought. “Aye, there’s where dear Clem sleeps.” Closing the sketchbook, she set it aside, and took the chair opposite me, stirring her tea with a small silver spoon. “Clem bought me these cups the year we was married. The whole set, and not a one broken, not even a chip.” She lifted the cup, staring thoughtfully at it for a moment, then sipped. “How long you folks been married?”
“Seventeen years next June.”
“That’s a good time. Must be prett’ near settled in each other’s ways by now. Marryin’s good, keeps a body on his toes. Me, once I lost Clem, I never cared to wed again.”
I watched her peering through the window at the great cookpot in the dooryard, following with her eye the trail of white smoke as it rose in the air. “Straight up,” I heard her mutter, “we’ll have a nice fair.”
She turned back. “Your place seems to be comin’ along, don’t it? You got a good man there in Bill Johnson.”
“Did have.” I explained about Bill’s imminent departure.
“Why, he didn’t say nothin’ to me ’bout goin’ to Las Vegas.” She sounded surprised and a little miffed that Bill had not taken her into his confidence. “You’ll be needin’ another, won’t you?”
“It’s not easy getting help around here, with everyone thinking about the corn crop.”
“Things’ll slack off a bit now before harvest.” Her heavy tread caused the floorboards to give as she got up and tied one of the puddings in waxed paper and slipped it into the sack I had brought the buns in. “Got to drop this off to Justin Hooke’s. He’s partial to blood puddin’s.”
Justin Hooke, I had learned, was the tall plowman we had seen in the field the day we first arrived in Cornwall Coombe. Owner of the most prosperous farm in the community, he was generally regarded with a mixture of awe, respect, and benevolence. His wife’s name was Sophie, and their union had been one the entire village looked upon fondly. Justin must have been a decided favorite of the Widow’s, for now she placed another pudding in the basket.
“How’d you like that tea?” she demanded, producing a box from the shelf. “Weber’s English. It’s a One-B Weber, not a Two-B. I mail to London after it. Ever hear of Fortnum & Mason?” I said I had. “That’s where. Fancy store. They don’t seem t’carry One-B Weber’s tea in America.”
I carried my cup to the sink, washed and rinsed it, and started for the door.
“Off so soon?” She laid a large quilt beside the basket.
I thanked her, and said I planned on hiking out to the Lost Whistle Bridge to make some drawings. Remembering what I had come for, I gave her the five dollars for eggs and honey. She pocketed it and said she was going out Lost Whistle way herself, if I cared to ride along. “Worthy ought to be here any moment to hitch up the buggy. Unless you prefer shanks’ mare.”
Again I had the feeling of command, rather than suggestion. But, yes, I replied, I’d be happy for the ride. She excused herself, saying she must ready herself for the fair, then left me and I heard her going up the stairs and passing overhead.
I wandered back out into the dooryard. Chickens and geese pecked at random among the rows of pole beans. In the distance the church bell sounded eight sonorous peals. Hearing a noise behind me, I looked to see someone pedaling a bicycle down the drive. I recognized Worthy Pettinger, who delivered the morning paper.
“Morning,” he called.
I returned the greeting and walked to meet him. “Morning, Worthy.”
“Sorry I’m late this morning, Mr. Constantine. Ma’s frazzled today over the fair.” He gave an energetic nod and his smile was bright as he took a paper from the handlebar basket and folded it. He was of high-school age, thin and lanky, with handsome, well-boned features, and a bright, eager smile; a thoroughly ingratiating young man. An industrious one as well; one could always see Worthy mowing someone’s lawn or chopping in a woodpile or planting a garden.
“Worth-ee?” A second-story window had flown up and the Widow’s head popped out. “Hitch up the mare and don’t dawdle.” She popped back in. “Oh, dear,” came her disembodied voice, “now where in the nation’s my brooch?”
Worthy kicked down the metal stand and leaned his bike on it, then deposited the newspaper on the steps. I ambled along behind while he went into the stable and led the little mare out. “Hey, old girl, hey, old girl,” he said cheerily as he slipped the bit in her mouth and adroitly maneuvered her into the traces. He brought the harness, hooked it up, and hitched the leads into the shafts, all in a matter of seconds.
“You seem to keep pretty busy,” I observed, admiring his dexterity.
“Yes, sir. Plenty of work hereabouts, if a fellow cares to do it. I’m trying to make enough money to go to agricultural college next fall. There’s still a lot that farmers don’t know about growin’ corn, even if they’d have you think otherwise. Organic, that’s the thing.” He spoke in a buoyant, forthright manner. “I figure by different planting methods you could maybe double the yield of corn. Good land around here, but people don’t take advantage of it. There’s machines that’ll do the work of ten men, with time to spare, for plowing and sowing, harvesting—everything.” He spoke to me confidentially: “I got a tractor.” I gathered from his tone this was a treasure on a par with the Widow’s cow. “It’s a beauty. I can take the whole motor apart and put it back together again, and she works just fine.” He spoke in such a secretive, guarded tone that I decided having a tractor in Cornwall must be a daring enterprise indeed.
“Why don’t the other farmers have them?”
“Not allowed. Machinery’ll put the small farmer out of business, and we’re sort of all in it together. But tractors could be the salvation of the whole town, them and harrows—”
“Shame on you, Worthy! Are you preachin’ sedition, then?” The Widow had appeared in the doorway, waiting while the boy led the horse and buggy to her. “Here’s a bun. Eat. You look thin.”
She had changed her work clothes for an elegant, full-skirted black dress, with a long black alpaca apron over it. Her white hair was carefully brushed and pinned up in a knot, and neatly covered by a snowy cap with a ruffled edge, the strings hanging down either side of her chin. The missing brooch adorned her ample bosom.
“Thanks, Widow.” Worthy picked up the paper and exchanged it for the bun.
“Don’t thank me, thank the mister’s missus—she made ’em. Drat that newspaper, I don’t know why I spend the money. Nothin’ but rape and murder and higher taxes.” She flung the paper aside and went into the kitchen, reappearing in a moment with her basket and quilt, and a small valise made of worn black leather. She kept a watchful eye until Worthy stowed all this safely under the seat.
“Drat, forgot my shears.” Again she disappeared, returning with her waist girdled by the black ribbon from which hung the silver shears, looking as though they were the companions of her life. She took the flowers from the bucket, wrapped their dripping ends in part of the discarded newspaper, and added these to the other things that had already been loaded. Thus fitted and accoutered, she gave the boy her hand while he aided her ascent into the buggy seat. “Did I remember to turn off the stove? Worthy, run and look.” She turned to me. “See how a good-lookin’ man like yourself flusters an old lady.” She indicated the place beside her, I took it, she picked up the reins and gee’d the mare, turning the buggy in a wide arc so that the wheels slid into one of the herb beds. “Hell’s bells, there’s my fennel ruined. Worth-ee?” She dropped the reins and waited for rescue. Worthy flew down the steps and led the mare from the dooryard onto the drive, smiling good-naturedly. “Think you’d never driven a buggy, Widow,” he said returning the reins to her. “Maybe you’d better break down and buy yourself a car.”
“What should I do with one of them infernal contraptions? All smoke and noise and gas-eatin’. Better a horse that eats hay. Clem gave me this buggy for a weddin’ present, and I’ll be buried before it is.” She flipped the reins, the mare started forward, but she immediately pulled up. “I was forgettin’. Worthy, Mr. Constantine here’s goin’ to need some help around his place. Bill Johnson’s takin’ himself out to Las Vegas for the gamblin’. Think you might find some time to lend a hand?” She fixed him with a look behind her spectacles.
“What kind of work, Mr. Constantine?” I explained about the skylight in the studio, and the terrace wall. He agreed to come at the first opportunity and see what might be done, then sped off on his paper route.
“He seems like a good kid,” I offered conversationally, grateful for the Widow’s concern in my difficulties.
“Aye, Worthy’s a likely lad. Good as they come and better’n most. He’s cheerful and obligin’ and he’s handy. He’ll make a good farmer one of these days.” I said I thought it ambitious of him to want to go to agriculture school. She did not reply immediately, but sat considering the matter. When she spoke, it was with a thoughtful tone. “He’s only makin’ trouble for himself. Folks won’t take to newfangled ways around here. He’s got his heart set on goin’ away to school, but his father en’t about to let him. Him nor his mother both.”
I expressed surprise that parents would stand in the way of a child’s wanting to better himself. The Widow shook her head. “I s’pose it sounds small to you. But you have to understand folks around here. They’re set in their ways and it’d take one of them atomic bombs to move ’em. Worthy, now, he’s different. Always has been. I midwifed him and I’ve seen him growin’ up spirited. Needs a bit of cautionin’ now and then, but he’ll do fine. They’re the hope of the world, the young. Your girl, now, Kate. Is she takin’ to our country ways? Does she seem happy?”
I said yes to both questions, and she continued to query me, a catechism that I decided stemmed from her sympathetic interest in Kate’s asthmatic condition. What did she eat? How many hours of sleep did she get a night? Had she ever been allergic before? What kind of exercise, and how much? Was she subject to fits of temperament or melancholy?
“She’s an only child, now, en’t she? Sometimes an only child’ll take on sicknesses a child with brothers and sisters never gets.”
I explained that while we had both hoped desperately for more children, Beth had suffered obstetrical complications and Kate’s delivery had been enormously difficult. I did not tell her, however, that secretly I harbored the fear that my adult case of mumps had left me sterile, and that it might be my fault, not Beth’s, that we’d had no other children.
The Widow’s questions next focused on Beth, an only child herself. And me, she wanted to know, had I brothers and sisters? No, I said, though Greeks often had large families.
“Fertile, yes.” She tilted her head at a quizzical angle, as though sizing me up. Her eyes twinkled as she said, “Beware of Greeks, don’t they say?”
“Only if they come bearing gifts.”
“Which you have—cinnamon buns. Wily folk, the Greeks. Look how they come in the night with a hollow horse to tumble the walls of Ilium.”
“I’m not out to tumble the walls of Cornwall Coombe.”
“Never knew the joys of children myself,” she went on. “Still, every last boy and girl in the village is mine, in a way. I like to watch ’em from my parlor window, see ’em rompin’ down the street. I rap my thimble on the pane and wave; they wave back but they keep goin’.” I felt her gruff, crusty air hid the loneliness she must have experienced during the long years of her widowhood. In another moment, she startled me by reaching out and patting my hand. “You folks be happy, hear? That’s all you’ve got, each other, and bein’ happy together.” I was about to murmur acknowledgment when the Widow called briskly, “Mornin’, Tamar. Mornin’, Missy.”
Skirts hiked up, her bare legs showing, the postmistress was sitting on a porch glider, braiding her little girl’s hair. The child eluded her and, carrying a ragged-looking doll, came down the walk to the picket gate and watched us pass. Framed by the red braids, her elf’s face was milky pale, pinched, and drawn-looking, and her large, washed-out eyes contemplated us with the dull-witted, curiously vague expression that can come of closely bred bloodlines.
“Horsy, Missy.” Slowing the buggy, the Widow jounced on the seat, making a to-do of the mare, causing it to bob its head and jingle its harness. The child made no reply, but only continued gazing at us. “Goin’ to pick a good sheep today, Missy? There’s a girl.” The old woman’s voice was friendly and hearty, and she gave a little nod of satisfaction. I had the sensation the child was staring not at her or at the horse but at me, and I felt unaccountably ill at ease as I looked back at the pale milky face, with its spate of reddish freckles over the bridge of the nose.
Her mother called from the porch, “Missy, come make poopoo.” Before obeying, the child turned, still clutching the ragged doll; again I felt the same odd sensation that the look was in some significant way directed toward me. As we passed on, I casually inquired of the Widow if it was true that Missy Penrose could tell the future. The old lady gave another nod; Missy had strange powers, of that there was no doubt. It was the freckles, she said, two dozen of them, rather in the shapes of the constellation Orion, with its two great stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel. These markings were the stars of her face, a kind of cosmos printed there, and as men might read the mysteries of those stars, so it had been given to the child to read other mysteries.
I continued thinking of the star-speckled face and the deep nature of Missy Penrose, and we rode in silence to the end of Main Street, where the Common lay before us, dotted with tall, spreading trees, the church steeple gleaming in the bright morning light. There was the bell in the tower, the great face of the clock below, and beside the open vestibule doors, old Amys Penrose, the bell ringer, dozing in a chair. On the Common, the green of the grass and leaves was intensified by the clarity of the clean blue sky and the white canvas of the booths and tents that had been set up for the Agnes Fair, with gay pennants fluttering from their peaks. All seemed in readiness for the day’s events: livestock enclosures had been put up, chairs and long tables had been set out for people to eat at, and three tall shafts had been dug into the ground for the shinnying contest.
The idly grazing sheep baaed as we stopped at the church-yard, where the Widow made her way to her
husband’s grave and arranged her fresh flowers, then stood silently with head bowed.
I walked to the top of the knoll and looked down the backward slope to where the churchyard ended, bounded by the iron railing. Beyond it was the untended plot, with its marker almost obliterated by weeds and growth. Again I wondered about Grace Everdeen, whose remains lay under the forlorn tombstone, and why she had been forbidden the company of the other village dead.
I turned back.
Head still bent, the Widow was speaking: “Well, Clem, things are lookin’ fine for fair day. Now all we can hope for is the right choosin’.” She angled her head as though awaiting reply. I moved away, affording her a larger measure of privacy for this genial dialogue between the quick and the dead, which for some reason seemed to me a perfectly natural thing.
At length she broke off, raised her head, and, catching my eye, smiled. She came toward me, stopping at one point to look down at another headstone.
“Well, Loren, well,” she murmured, stooping to pinch off a flower whose stem was broken. “Loren’s gone, too, and that’s in the manner of things. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh.”
I looked down at the stone. The inscription read:
LOREN MCCUTCHEON
Who Hoped but Failed
Age 28
“How did he die?” I asked.
“Of drink.”
“At twenty-eight?”
“’Twa’n’t the drink so much—but the fall he took while drinkin’. Slipped off the barn in the night.”
I was about to ask what misfortunes had caused the unknown Grace Everdeen’s exile, but the Widow, giving short shrift to the dear departed, lifted her skirts and marched from the cemetery, shears swinging on their ribbon.