The Time of Man

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  ‘It just seemed like the ground rose up in the air and hit me,’ Henry said. ‘I worked out till nigh dark and I was on my way in when all of a sudden the ground just rose up outen the earth and hit me a terrible lick. That’s just how it seemed. The ground hit me one awful lick and then I found myself in the bottom of that-there hole and no idea how I got there. Like that, it was.’

  The doctor went through the small house gathering up the things he needed, or he would ask Ellen, and his assurance and his speed filled the house. When he had set the bone in place and bound on the splints, the limb lay very large and white and wooden and still on the bed, and Henry came sickly out from the sleep of the chloroform. He would have to lie in bed many days, the doctor said, and Ellen brought water in a basin and bathed away the dust of the fields, a new kindness in her mind. To be bathing her father who lay white and still under her hands, yielding easily to her gentle demands, she passed with quietness and dignity through the room, the world grown simpler and less significant.

  Henry lay in his bed for two weeks and after that he learned to sit in a chair with his injured leg stretched out heavily upon some support, hobbling back to bed on the crutches the doctor loaned him. Ellen finished setting the tobacco without help when the rainy season came, the land having been prepared many weeks before. She went slowly along the rows, carrying the plants from the bed at the foot of the hill. The season lay before her as a vast unweighed burden, and all the stooping and dragging and hauling, felt in anticipation, rested on her shoulders, on her arms, on her thighs, on her mind. She wondered who would plough the corn, the next labour after the tobacco setting, and after that would be the cutting of the hay, and there would be the garden to hoe and the little wheat crop to reap. Half of everything would go to the man who owned the land, ten hills for the man who owned the soil and then ten for them, ten shocks for Orkeys before their ten. She came in from the field too tired to care for the garden. She ate her food too weary to listen to Henry’s story of twingeing bones and Nellie’s report of the sow’s litter and the disasters among the hens. She would eat her supper silently when Nellie piled it onto her plate and nod in her chair while the dishes were being cleared. But after she had set the tobacco, just when the need of the ploughing grew actual, the man from Wingate’s farm came offering to plough. ‘I’ll put it in between my own and never miss the time,’ he said.

  The next day Ellen saw a plough going up and down their rows and heard a voice speaking sharply to guide the horse. Jasper Kent had come to plough their fields. She could hear him gee and haw at the horse all morning, his voice speaking suddenly out of the hill, now and then hurling out an angry threat, oaths and threats and sharp commands a part of the business of getting the horse turned squarely in the furrow. She would stop her hoe in the garden to listen; she had long since ceased to heed Henry’s more feeble ploughing voice. In the late afternoon Kent stopped at the yard door to talk a little with Henry who sat there in a chair, to tell how the crops did and to offer help, and many afternoons later he would come. ‘I’ll try to see my way to plough that-there patch out for you-all this week,’ he would say. As she went up and down the yard to feed the stock Ellen would catch the meanings of their voices. Sometimes both men talked at once, each trying to convince the other, but Henry was grateful and he would concede in the end, bought by his gratitude.

  ‘Nohow I always taken notice if you plant potatoes in the dark moon of March you get a better crop,’ Kent said.

  ‘Light moon,’ Henry said. ‘I always thought light moon.’

  ‘No, dark. Dark moon. That’s science. Cabbage, now, in the light moon. Beans, corn, peas, all light. Beets, now, they go in in the dark of the moon. There’s a science to that-there. You ought to set a post in the dark of the moon, did you ever hear? If you don’t it’ll rot underground sure.’

  Passing down the yard with the feed for the hogs Ellen would catch the wonder of their talk. ‘I taken a look at the almanac and I see Venus was the morning star and forthwith I …’ She would pass beyond the reach of their words. She never joined them at the kitchen door for Kent was felt to be Henry’s friend. The thought that there should be a morning star, given to the morning, would haunt her sense of the pigs as she poured out their mash, and the beauty of the words lingered with her as she said them over and over. The morning star; she had never said these words before. The thought that men knew the morning star and had it in mind, calling it by name, other names – this reared a new wonder. Once as she returned to the house Kent arose suddenly and stood before her.

  ‘Lock this-here away somewheres along with the other, will you, Ellen? I got no safe place to keep a trifle.’ He put some bills into her hand. ‘Sold the calves today and this-here is my share. Could you put it by for me for a spell?’

  Albert Wingate came back from town any night, he said, and tormented his mother until she gave him whatever money she had by her. When he came there were dark ways in the house, he and his mother quarrelling all night and calling names. Sometimes he brought a band of revellers with him and there was a great noise with random pistol shots. When he was gone all the boxes and cupboards were turned out onto the floor, for he was never done searching the house for money and even robbed his mother if she slept.

  ‘She lets him take all she’s got and when he’s gone she pukes up a pile of hard words after him for a spell. A Tuesday he drove off a heifer that was half mine. I let that go for the time, and whilst I’m a peaceful man I don’t aim to let no low-trash like Albert run over me, and if he comes again and takes off the property he’ll maybe see trouble and a lavish of it too.’

  Ellen put the money, twenty dollars, in the trunk and thought of it no more. The pressure of the planting was past and whenever the need for the plough became immediate Kent found a few spare hours to give. Ellen cut the hay, driving their old mare hitched to the cutting implement, and afterward she raked the hay by hand and built it into stacks. J.B. Tarbell would pass along the road every day, going and coming from his work; he was painting for Squire Stigall. He would stop for a drink at the spring by the roadside and in the sigh that followed his deep draught he would say:

  ‘That-there’s the best water anywheres this side of Muldraugh’s Hill and I’ve tasted about all the wells in thirty mile around. That-there is rich cold water, I say.’

  Often he would sit all afternoon to chat. He would talk about tasty fruits and juicy mouth-watery berries until his own mouth dripped with its imagined sweet, or he would tell of clear springs and long ways to go, of the many times he had passed up and down. Often the Carriers came, and on Sunday afternoon Susie and Pius and Regina, and sometimes the Stigall youth would linger for a little about the door, or Kent would stop as he passed. J.B. Tarbell would have candy that was wrapped in bits of coloured paper on which, folded inside, were lines of verse which expressed admiration and affection. He would pass the candy about with his own hand, taking the pieces out of the sack and presenting each with a bow, scraping his foot. He would hold back some choice bit, the largest piece or the piece wrapped in fringed paper, choosing another for Nellie, another for Bell or Regina, but when he came to Ellen he would kiss the chosen piece and give it to her with a deep bow, or he would say, ‘Here’s a sweet for Sweetnen.’

  ‘I’m due over beyond the Ridge long afore now,’ he said. ‘I know they-all are a-wonderen why I don’t show up. Well, they’ll be powerful glad to see me walk in some day.’ He told long stories while all sat listening. ‘As soon as they seen it was J.B. Tarbell they called the dogs off… They offered me a big salary to stay and work all year but I’d a heap rather be footloose and my own boss. There’s only one man ever a-goen to boss old J.B. and that man is a woman. And so I says I’d a heap rather be my own boss, but no offence meant. That was when I followed picture-taken.’ His little string tie would sprangle under its faint blackness, always tied in a neat bow. Sometimes he would sing a song,

  Oh, my poor Nellie Gray

  They have taken her
away,

  or he would play a mouth harp. Often as he passed along the road he would leave a paper of the sweets for Ellen who would be in the field. Bell’s hens were in a setting mood and she often came to sit with Henry to share in the taffy. Sometimes Ellen would pile her hair in its soft rolls and fasten a small blue ribbon at her throat, and then, if Tarbell came, she would sit apart smiling a little at the unveiled wooing, or she would laugh outright when she unrolled the bit of paper from the sweet drop he had kissed, and smile again as she passed into her hard white room and turned about from the clock shelf to the wooden chest. Jasper Kent’s money lay on the bottom of the chest underneath her blue dress of thin muslin, the cloth for which Nellie had bought from the peddler. Ellen had taken the cloth quietly and had tried on the garment quietly when Nellie had sewed the seams, but her eyes liked to linger on the blue folds that were sweet scented and crisp to touch. She had persuaded Nellie to buy herself a piece of bright cloth for a dress, and Nellie had chosen a grey with some small purple flower hanging in the mesh. They talked softly about the sewing of the seams and of whether there should be a bit of lace or a bow, for Ellen could not give delight or glee to a muslin or a frill now, her mind one with the wants of the fields, with the beasts and the ploughed trenches. In the fields she wore the faded dresses of the summer before, and there, seen distantly, her figure blended evenly with the turned soil or sank into the corn rows, now waist high or more. In the dark blue dress, now turned to grey by the sun and the wind and the rain, she moved almost unseen through the windows of the hay or came down the steep path among the stones beside the quarry. In the pale washed-out dress she drifted all morning up and down the lines of the tobacco, the tobacco flower come before its season, as the pale flower of the tobacco come to tend its young.

  But the near way of the clods, as she knew them, as she leaned over them, were a strength to destroy her strength. There, present, the heaviness of the clods pulled at her arms and the field seemed to reach very far before it stopped at the pool by the quarry. The struggling grass, matted into the soil, clung about the plants here and there and scarcely yielded to the two or three blows of the tool. She felt the weight of the grass as she tore it away, and now and then a blow so sharp that it made her flanks ache was needed to turn the soil. The field had been neglected for the summer rains had lasted overlong. She ceased to think of any day before this day or of any task before this. Each plant freed of weeds was something liberated, but another stood trammelled, the same endlessly snared, the same, until she tramped a treadmill and her thought was clodded with earth. The sun was warm on her aching shoulders and her strong knees quivered with the strain. As she plied the hoe a quick image of a year, a season, from planting to cutting and stripping, stood forth as if it were in the soil, a design, all finished and set apart. The design of the grass roots matted with the soil lay under her eyes, complete forever, varying in every detail but forever the same. The hoe came down over and over, no two blows exactly alike but no varying in the form. The year stood plainly designed, one with the grass and the dust, a certain year, formed with beginning and end, planting and cutting, gay laughing and places to go. She had said happy things and they had seemed to have meanings, and people had said things back to her, things she had kept in mind to smile at afterward. All now lay in the form of the year. A little nick in the bright edge of the hoe twinkled in and out of the brown of the earth. The hoe cut in half its depth or it cut in more, and the grains of earth fell airily against the dull upper part. The year began to turn, a form moving lightly upon itself, but she minded nothing of the year, for her body had changed, and the hoe and the soil now cut each other sharply, visible and near. ‘Jonas,’ she said, over and over. It was a name, that was all, a name for something that was gone.

  Her feet were uncomfortable in Henry’s old shoes, but her own were nearly out. The loose old plough shoes dragged heavily under her feet and rubbed at her bare ankles. She could say the word over and over, ‘Jonas, Jonas, Jonas.’ It was nothing but a word, gone out of her body, as gone as last year’s breath. Clods had fallen into one of the shoes and she stopped an instant to shake the brogue free, then back to the hoe again. She felt the stride of her limbs as she moved to the next plant and her shoulders knew the power of the grass. ‘Jonas,’ she said, ‘Jonas.’ It was a word, less than a being, a bit of a design lost in a turning year. ‘Jonas,’ a flat sound without meaning. Suddenly a wave of pity and grief swept over her. She had played too long with the name and it had taken life. Lonely flesh beside her lonely flesh. She was standing by MacMurtrie’s gate in the moonlight and the hounds were running down the field. She was sitting half the night seeing the logs burn low and renew. The year broke and fell out of its design, becoming real, becoming a stored-up part of herself, and emotion rolled over her to drown her. The dust was enlarged and the sharp edge of the hoe wavered, for tears were washing over her eyes.

  But the dust was dust again and her vision was clear, the edge of the hoe standing straight and flashing keenly into the soil. ‘Not him,’ she said, ‘not him.’ She went endlessly down the row, plant after plant, the same, no thought of how long she would endure or of the end. Her body and mind were of the earth, clodded with the clods; the strength of her arms and her back and her thighs arose out of the soil, the clods turned upon themselves to work back into their own substance endlessly. The bell at St Lucy rang for the mid-morning but its tones beat upon the outside of the dust. A little while the bell flowed onto the outer faces of the clods but it could not pierce the inner part and it fell away, scarcely missed when it went. She turned the row-end without thought, without liberation, treading a mill. Then she heard an echo of her blade falling, or a repetition of it, nearer than St Lucy’s bell and more resonant of the inner way of the soil, but she went steadily on. The echo became another hoe at work, drawing nearer, and then a shadow began to creep toward her down the row and she saw that Jasper Kent had come to the field. He worked toward her steadily and she stopped at the labour, aware now of the day and of the farm, and she rubbed her aching arms and smiled across the tobacco plants, aware now of the quarry. When he came up to her he stopped and looked at her and laughed a little, as if he knew that the conveyance of his arrival there had been the hoe.

  ‘You could do some easy work if you’d rather,’ he said. ‘I can finish this in no time.’ Then he took some bills from his pocket and handed them to her, saying, ‘Another piece of money I wish you’d put away for me. Sold a little truck. Go do some easy work whilst I finish this-here.’

  She took the roll of bills from his hand and felt the coins wrapped inside it. Then she saw him move swiftly across the row, moving toward the end of the field with swift strokes of the hoe, three or four blows to each plant and it was finished. She went slowly away, startled and unprepared, hearing the withdrawing thud of the hoe as she went. Then she sat on the stile beside the garden patch under a thin ash tree and shelled the peas for the dinner. She began to think of Susie Whelen and of how her mouth was full and wide and her eyes soft and blue, her dark hair in a roll over her forehead. If Jasper or if Tarbell should look at Susie Whelen it would be seen that she was pretty and they would want her in their arms, all the more if they should look at her mouth when she smiled. She was soft and warm and full of laughter, or sullen and short, easy with her curses. To look at her was to see how full she was with her woman-ness, and Tarbell would surely see. Beyond the fields rose the wall of the quarry and above this the crest of the high pasture ran in a rugged line against the sky, all faint now in the heat of the mid-morning. It would have taken her two days to finish the field, she reflected, but now it would be done that day. He had smiled when he had said ‘some easy work’ and his eyes had been on her face and on her eyes. She thought that she might get another ribbon or a fan on a long chain of beads, and she could feel the fan softly opening in her hand. Perhaps Jasper would take it into his hand or touch it against his face as he talked, but Susie Whelen came as a menace to the edge
of her vision of the fan against Jasper’s face, or Tarbell’s, her mouth breaking easily into a smile, careless of its smile or of its oath. Her curses broke on her smooth lips and her bright large teeth, and one could kiss her damp mouth with a deep kiss, pushing in on her lips, eating her oath back to its core and living on its life, knowing her soft bosom and her shoulders.

  Now she dropped the peas into the basket and felt Jasper’s money in the pocket of her skirt, lying against her thigh, and she remembered his words. She would hate Susie Whelen and she would watch her and she would not trust her warm body and the warm breath of her laugh. After the sugar and coffee were bought she would have something for herself, and she reckoned the price of eggs against the number in the basket under Nellie’s bed to test out the sum. The hens had fallen away from their laying with the mid-season and eggs were hard to find. The huckster refused any that were thin-shelled and old and often laid aside half she carried out to him. She remembered the huckster’s drooping eyes and his serious mouth drawn in a little when he counted the eggs, his ways all intent upon his business. ‘Twelve cents,’ he would say, driving a hard bargain with Nellie, ‘I say twelve. If I let you women run my business I’ll land in the poor farm.’ But for her his way was gentler, giving little kindnesses, reckoning the sum in her favour and giving her the odd unreckoned cents if she bought a ribbon or a pin, and he would let her try all the pins to see which looked best on her bosom. All this for her because she was young and because she had clear straight eyes, but he listened less to Regina because her looks were slow and her step plodding, her skin sewed crookedly onto her cheeks. But he laughed with Susie Whelen and let her have her time to choose a pin or a lace, easy and happy with her, walking briskly about the wagon, because she made him feel young himself.