by Thomas Tryon
The street was quiet and deserted, except for the postmistress, who came along the sidewalk on the far side, leading her daughter, Missy, by the hand. When she got to the post office, she turned the child toward the grazing sheep, gave her a pat on the bottom, and sent her off, then unlocked the post office door and went inside. The child ambled across the roadway and onto the Common, where she slowly made her way among the flock.
Meanwhile the Widow, hands planted on hips, was surveying the old bell ringer, still dozing in the sunshine.
“He’s a codger, Amys.” She chuckled and accepted my hand as I assisted her into her seat. “Forty years our sexton and still he don’t hold with Agnes Fair. Nor much of anything, if it comes to that.” She clucked up the mare and the buggy rolled onto the roadway. “Good Missy,” she called to the child, who did not look up but only stared at the sheep as they moved around her, their bells making a pleasant tinkling sound. The Widow snapped the reins on the mare’s flanks, a swarm of flies arose, and the horse stepped out at a smart pace, back the way we had come, heading out the country end of Main Street.
5
“HOW’D YOU COME BY that wart there?”
She had handed me the reins and now she brought my hand closer to her spectacles to examine the growth on my finger. I explained about the pressure from my brushes, and said I’d been meaning to see a doctor about it.
“Ha! You do that. Old Doc Bonfils over to Saxony. Maybe he’ll rid you of it—maybe he won’t. What you need is a little red bag—that’ll take care of your wart, and then some.”
“Little red bag?”
She laid her finger alongside her nose and closed one eyelid. “What we call the Cornwall cure. We’ll see to it,” she added mysteriously, giving me back my hand.
We were proceeding along the winding road, called the Old Sallow Road, which leads to Soakes’s Lonesome and the Lost Whistle Bridge. In the east the sun rose higher in a sky already pure cerulean. The corn grew tall on either side of the road, and when I commented that the year promised a good crop, the Widow agreed.
“I knew t’would be. I been listenin’ all summer to the corn a-growin’. Oh yes sir, you can hear it all right. You come out with me one night next year—don’t smile, I’m not talkin’ about country matters—and you’ll hear it too. The softest rustle of leaf, soft as fairies’ wings, and you know them stalks is stretchin’ up to the sky, the tassels is length’nin’, the ears is bit by bit gettin’ fatter, till you can hear their husks pop. That’s somethin’, on a hot dark night, standin’ by a cornpatch in the light o’ the Mulberry Moon, and hearin’ the corn grow. Then you can say the earth has returned the seed ten thousand-fold.”
She pointed upward. “See that blue sky now, that’s God’s sky. And up there in that vasty blue is God. But see how far away He is. See how far the sky. And look here, at the earth, see how close, how abiding and faithful it is. See this little valley of ours, see the bountiful harvest we’re to have. God’s fine, but it’s old Mother Earth that’s the friend to man.”
And corn was king. Foolish folk, she continued, on a cold night might insist on burning their cobs in the fire. Burn corn? Never. Return the corn to the earth, bury it, then, when the plowman turned the furrow in the spring, the tilth would come up rich and dark against the shear, a fertile soil willing to bear generously for whatever hand was put to the harrow. Love the earth and it must love you back.
“Yes,” she concluded thoughtfully, “we’ll have a bountiful Harvest Home.”
“Just what is Harvest Home?” I asked.
“Harvest Home?” She peered at me through her spectacles. “Why, I don’t think I ever heard a pusson ask that before. Everybody knows what Harvest Home is.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s what comes of bein’ a newcomer. Harvest Home’s when the last of the corn comes in, when the harvestin’s done and folks can relax and count their blessin’s. A time o’ joy and celebration. Eat, drink, and be merry. You can’t have folks carousin’ while there’s corn to be gathered, so it must wait till the work’s done. It means success and thanks and all good things. And this year’s the seventh year.”
“The seventh year?”
“Ayuh. For six years there’s just feastin’ and carryin’ on, but the seventh’s a special one. After the huskin’ bee there’s a play, and—well the seventh year’s particular for us. Harvest Home goes back to the olden times.”
“When does it come?”
She looked at me again as if I were indeed a strange species. “Never heard a pusson ask that either. Harvest Home comes when it comes—all depends.”
“On what?” I persisted doggedly.
“The moon.” While I digested this piece of information, she pursed up her lips thoughtfully, watching as some birds flashed by. “Three,” she counted, observing their smooth passage through the sky. “And larks. Larks is a good omen if ever there was.”
“You believe in omens.”
“Certain. You’ll say that’s ignorant superstition, bein’ a city fellow.” Most of the villagers, she continued, were descended from farmers who had come from old Cornwall, in England, more than three hundred years earlier, and the Cornishman didn’t live who wouldn’t trust to charms or omens: stepping on a frog would bring rain, wind down a chimney signified trouble in store, a crow’s caw might foretell death or disaster, and, she concluded, did I find all this odd?
“No,” I replied, “not particularly.” Being Greek, I knew about superstitions; my grandmother had been a walking almanac of “do”s and “don’t”s, including broken mirrors and hats on beds.
“Superstition’s just a condition of matter over mind, so t’speak. I’m a foolish old woman and I don’t see things so clear. Missy, now, she can see plain as well water.”
Again I saw the child’s dull but watchful eyes.
The Widow continued, “Take that collar button in the hog’s stomach. Missy’ll know for sure how to read it.”
“You mean it could be a bad omen?”
“Certain! It just depends. Still and all—” Her voice again took on a worried tone as she looked away over the brimming fields. “But what could go wrong now? Surely the crop’s grown? Surely we’ll have a bountiful Harvest Home? Surely God won’t take away what He’s promised the whole summer long. Look at the corn there, as fat and ripe as a man could hope for. Surely everything’s been done that a body could do? Surely seven years was penance enough?” Her rapid questions being, I assumed, strictly rhetorical, I could do no more than nod my head at each while I studied the mare moving in front of us. Yet her voice told me how much she, and the entire community, counted on the harvest. Finally I asked her what was meant by the seven years’ penance.
“The last Waste,” she explained obscurely, and went on to relate how in Cornwall in the olden times, as she put it, there had been the Great Waste, when the land lay under a plague of Biblical proportions, the crops blighted, when nothing would grow. It had been the fault of Agnes, that same Agnes in whose name this very fair today was being held. For undisclosed reasons, this Agnes of old Cornwall had risen up before the entire village and cursed the crop. In fury, the villagers had dispatched her on the spot, but as a result of her maledictions they had suffered years of pestilence and drought. Then, one night, the spirit of the dead Agnes appeared to one of the elders—a repentant Agnes—saying that if a fair would be given each year in her honor, the land would again flourish and the crops would be plentiful. Thus the establishment of the annual Agnes Fair, a provenance I found interesting if fanciful.
Yet the next part of this strange history as the Widow related it struck my ear as real enough. Thirteen years ago, right here in Cornwall Coombe, there had been another Waste; the river had not risen in the spring, the ground was dry when the seed was planted, the rains did not come, the corn withered in the husk, and hard times came upon the village. Small wonder, I thought, that the farmers were superstitious.
Behind us I heard the noisy clango
r of kettleware, the familiar furious din announcing the various comings of Jack Stump, the peddler. Looking back over the seat, I saw him working his cart in a frantic effort to catch up with us. Never turning, but with a serene smile, the Widow made no effort to restrain the mare’s progress, and only let her have her head.
Jack Stump, newly arrived like us, had during that first summer become a familiar sight along the byways and thoroughfares of the village. His improbable-looking rig was little more than a pieced-together relic of a cart constructed atop the several parts of an ancient bicycle. Astride a shiny, cracked leather seat and flying a small tattered American flag on one of the handlebars, he would drive the cart, ringing a cowbell or squeezing the rubber bulb of a brass horn to witness his comings and goings; these and the continual clang and rattle of the tin pans, kettles, and skillets strung above on lines made a mobile pandemonium that alerted the countryside to his continual progresses. And where he came and went, Jack Stump talked.
“Jabberwocky,” the Widow said, “that’s what that one spouts.” She jerked her head to the rear where the peddler strained under his load. “Poor benighted soul.” When he at last pulled alongside, she nudged me with her elbow and offered him the best of the day and weather.
“Whatcha say, Widow. Whatcha say, sir?”
The Widow slowed the mare to a walk. “Well, Jack, glad to see we’re not harboring a slugabed. What gets you up so bright and early?”
He huffed, seeking his breath, until the huff turned to a wheeze. “I’m an early bird, Widow, catching my worms. Yes, ma’am, there’s plenty to do and I’m the fellow to do the doin’—oh, yes. The way I see it, the world’s an oyster, and you got to be quick to catch the pearl—”
“Before—” the Widow tried to put in.
“Before the other fellow steals it first. How are you today, sir?” Before I could reply, he had his answer ready. “Fine, sir, fine as rain, I can see that. And your lovely wife? Fine, too, is she? Good enough. You folks come from down New York way, ain’t that so? Seen a bit of the big town myself in my time, damned if I haven’t—sorry, Widow—”
He was a scruffy old fellow, a mite of a man, all head and torso, with hardly any underpinnings to speak of. His merry monkey face was flat and wide. He wanted shaving, his teeth seemed nonexistent, and his hair stuck out under his ruined fedora like scarecrow’s straw, half covering large jug ears. He was scrupulously dirty, as if he worked at maintaining the traditional image of the disreputable hobo. In spite of the temperature, he wore layers of tattered clothing, and where a button had failed a pin would do as well.
“How’s your shears, Widow?” he asked, pedaling alongside the buggy. “Sharp as a tack, I’ll bet, darned if they ain’t. I sharpened ’em up myself, didn’t I?”
“That you did, Jack.”
“And not a cent of charge.” He gave me a droll look. “Not for no Florence Nightingale such as this dear lady is.”
“How’s your backside, Jack?” she inquired.
“I’m sittin’, ain’t I?”
“Jack’s been sufferin’ from a sight o’boils,” she explained, solving the mystery of what had kept him from his daily rounds.
“And that’s no handy place, I’ll admit, for a fellow who sits as much as I do,” Jack continued. “But this sweet creature, she bends me over a barrel and puts on some of that there salve of hers—Say, Widow, what all’s in that salve?”
“That’d be tellin’. How’s the toothache?”
“Gone, just like you said.”
“Still wearin’ your little bag?”
He dug down in his shirt and displayed a small bag of red felt hung on a drawstring around his neck.
“No—don’t you feel inside there,” she cautioned as he poked a grimy finger. “You’ll let out the charm for sure. Where you off to now?”
“To the woods.”
“Soakes’s Lonesome?” Her eyes on the road ahead, she spoke deliberately. “What takes you there?”
“Got to check my traps. I got ’em staked out all through them woods—”
“Oughtn’t to go in there, Jack.”
“Haw—them Soakeses don’t scare me none.”
“You catch me a rabbit, I’ll make you a rabbit pie, Jack. Wait now, dearie, just a minute,” she said to the mare. “We’ve got a stop here.” She reined up the mare at the roadside and I helped her down. We stood before the Hooke farm, the largest and handsomest in Cornwall Coombe. The house was a gem of Early American architecture, with lawns and gardens in front, broad cornfields on either side, fruit orchards beyond, and cows grazing in the meadows that stretched away to the river.
“Shan’t be a moment.” The Widow took her basket and marched down the drive to greet the mistress of the house, Sophie Hooke, who was feeding a flock of chickens in the yard beside the kitchen door. She kissed the Widow’s cheek and they spoke while the fowl pecked at their feet. Suddenly a rooster appeared among them, sending them into a panic of squawks and feathers.
“That’s the biggest rooster I’ve ever seen,” I declared.
“That’s the gen’ral talk. Everyone says Justin Hooke’s got the biggest rooster in town, if you catch my drift.” Jack Stump snapped his hat brim and slipped me a lewd wink. According to village repute and ladies’ gossip, nature had generously endowed Farmer Hooke sexually; hence, “Justin’s rooster.”
“You mean the women talk about that at their kitchen door?” I tried not to sound shocked, but I was surprised that such locker-room subjects were discussed among the housewives of this community.
“You live on a farm, you see everything,” Jack replied philosophically. “They’re a bawdy bunch, farmers. Women, too. I tell ’em the one about the fellow with twelve inches but he don’t use it as a rule, and don’t they squeal some! They know what Justin’s got, all right. I guess it’s what keeps Sophie smilin’! There’s the old cock himself.” He nodded to the barn where Justin Hooke appeared in the hayloft door. He swung out on the baling rope and made a dramatic sweep to the ground. When he, also, had kissed the Widow’s cheek, she lifted the napkin from her basket and offered him the two puddings.
Straddling his seat on the cart, the peddler shook his head admiringly. “Ain’t she a fine woman, the Widow Fortune? A good strong soul, damned if she ain’t, good for a man’s work as well as a woman’s, no worse in the barnyard than in the kitchen. There’s never a time I stop by her door when there ain’t a slice of pie or a hunk of sausage waitin’ for me. You’d look a far piece before you’d find a more kindly, generous soul, and I tell it at every door I pass.”
“Goodnight nurse, Jack, how you carry on.” The Widow had returned from her errand to overhear the last of his praises.
Doffing his hat, Jack bowed in a deferential manner. “The world don’t seem so bad a place when a man can find dear ladies like yourself in it.”
“Hush; enough.” She let me help her into her seat, took up the reins, and we continued along toward Soakes’s Lonesome. Here and there in the cornfields, I saw scarecrows stuck between the rows, rising above the tops of the stalks. Not the ordinary, garden-variety of scarecrow, these were fanciful fellows, decked out in extravagant bits of motley costuming and rags. There was one in particular, the head and body stuffed with straw and cornhusks, a battered hat tilted rakishly over one button eye, a long feather stuck in the band like a cavalier’s plume.
Just then two crows swooped up out of the field, their wings black and shiny against the sky. “Two crows,” I heard the Widow murmur. “Now, that’s bad for sure.” She shook her head, and clucked up the mare.
“Jack, I’m in the market,” she hinted to the peddler.
“In what way, Widow?”
“Old clothes. I’ll be needin’ them to make my scarecrows for next year.”
“How many do you make?”
“Nearly all you’ve seen. Hardly a farmer in the village doesn’t come plaguing me around Spring Festival time to do him up a scarecrow. Can you fetch me some good outfit
s? Somethin’ swanky?”
“Sure I can.”
“Cheap, now. I don’t pay good money for rags.”
We had come to the top of a rise, where Jack tipped his scroungy hat again and took his leave, coasting off toward the bottom in a cloud of dust, the echo of his tinware trailing behind.
The Widow laughed, watching him go. “His heart’s in the right place, but his tongue’s an affliction.”
As we moved down the hill, the cornfields spread wide and far. Past the fields and grazing meadows, the treetops rose in lush, billowy foliage, their leaves still a long way off from turning. A curl of smoke rose from the Tatum farm opposite the edge of the woods. Beyond the woods—Soakes’s Lonesome, as it was called—lay the river. On the other side I could make out the brown patches of Tobacco City land, where the crop had already been harvested, and the rolls of white netting which had not yet been taken down. A dirt road wound between two fields, ending at a jetty by the riverbank. A cloud of dust rose as a pink car, an Oldsmobile, pulled up close to the bank. Several men got out and clambered into a motor skiff tied at the jetty. Soon it was cutting a path through the water—the hum of the engine lost to us at that distance—and heading for a point of land on our side where the woods grew down to the river’s edge. I watched the craft’s progress, and as it approached, the voices of the men became faintly audible. When they stepped ashore I caught the dull gleam of sunlight on rifle barrels. Then they entered the woods and disappeared.
“Soakeses,” the Widow commented in a sour tone, as though identifying the men by name were sufficient to sum up their entire and particular natures. Forthwith she revealed to me the salient facts concerning Soakes’s Lonesome, whose history was an interesting one, full of the blood and havoc for which the Cornish people had long been known.
Originally, the sizable tract had been designated by the village founders as communal land, within whose preserves anyone was entitled to hunt or fish. Then, somewhere in the early 1700s, it had become the property of the Soakes family, who accordingly reserved the hunting and fishing rights to themselves. Though the village fields had proved rich for crops, the Soakeses and some others of the old settlers moved across the river, where, eschewing corn, they engaged in raising tobacco. The move, said the village fathers, constituted forfeiture of all rights to land on this side of the river, and henceforward Soakes’s Lonesome would no longer belong to them. The Soakes clan, then extensive, refused to relinquish its title, which was now held in dispute between the family and the people of Cornwall Coombe. The present generation—an old man, his wife, and five sons—were generally regarded as a fierce and savage tribe of “tobacco scut,” who for their part still continued to look upon the land as theirs; and woe to the trespasser.