Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  Delph was more excited than Katy. She flew about and set the house, neglected a bit during the tobacco stringing, to rights, put fresh flowers here and there, and felt a twinge of sorrow that her home was so plain and bare. It would most likely seem poorer still to Emma, fresh from a large city where she had made lots of money and could have most anything she wanted.

  Finished with her house work, Delph went to the others in the barn. It was not likely that Emma and Dorie would come before the afternoon. She would make some lemonade, put herself and Burr-Head, who was always grubby like a farmer, into fresh clean clothes, and receive her guests in proper style.

  She had scarcely had time to play a bit with Burr-Head before commencing work, then Katy, outside helping Marsh strip leaves, was heard to scream, ''Here comes Mom an' Emma now."

  Delph jumped up, all in a fluster at having to receive any stranger in a faded cotton dress, thick with tobacco smell, but when

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  she saw Emma some of her dismay left her. Emma wore one of Dorie's bonnets, and a plain gingham work dress. As she walked across the barnyard she, like her mother, must stop to look at everything, admire a cement watering trough Marsh had made, and exclaim over some of Delph's zinnias showing through the garden fence.

  Delph went out to meet her, and marveled that any woman from Chicago could look so like a farmer's wife. Emma was brown as a fodder blade, and her hands looked as if she might have a garden. She was a tall, wide-shouldered woman, larger than Dorie, but with her mother's blue-gray eyes and hearty way of shaking hands. She smiled at Delph, and wanted to know if Burr-Head had cut any more teeth. Oh, yes, she knew all about Burr-Head. She took the county paper, and always read Delph's news.

  Delph suggested that it would be pleasanter in the house, but both Emma and Dorie said they might just as well string tobacco while they talked, Delph was pleased by her friendliness and her air of being always at home, but during that day and the numerous other times she was with Emma through the month of her vacation, the pleasure of knowing her was weakened at times by disappointment. Emma could seldom be led to talk of the things she, Delph, wanted to hear.

  Now and then Delph, with Katy helping her, could lead her to talk of Chicago and life in a big department store, but they would be scarcely started before Emma would maybe insist on asking questions about some one with whom she had gone to high school, or talk of her garden. She worked in town but lived a distance out and had a large flower and vegetable garden. She was proud of her new job and a bit thrilled at the idea of living in New York, still she was worried for fear that she could never afford a place for a garden about New York. She never felt at home without a garden. That was how she got such a good tan; all the people in the office envied her her tan.

  One day when the tobacco was strung and Marsh was cutting in the field, Emma came alone. Delph was breaking late green beans for foddering. She and Emma sat in the shade of the house corner and talked through the whole of the afternoon. They talked at first as any country women might have talked; crops and weather, canning,

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  and apple drying, the neighbors, and the way Ezrie Cutler, the teacher Marsh had hired, was straightening things out up at school.

  But when there came a lull in the conversation, Delph asked, without lifting her eyes from the beans in her lap, ''Tell me, Emma, would it bewell, hard for a girl that didn't know how to do much of anythingto get a start in a city?"

  Emma snapped a bean with vigor. "It's never been easyI mean for all the young girls that go out from this country." She hesitated and pondered with her eyes on the fields of corn that led from the back yard to the river, then went on, breaking the beans more slowly as she talked. "But well, I guess that every one of us that ever went away were disappointed in a lot of ways, and think sometimes we'd been better off at home."

  "But th' others?" Delph asked impatiently. "Th' ones, not like you, them that have got nothin' but their two hands?"

  "I guess it's worse for them," Emma said, and nodded over the beans. "Jobs are scarcenow. They all go off thinkin' they'll come back some day and show people what th' city's done for them. But mostly they never do. I guess most end up as factory workers, or waitresses, or at most stenographers. Then they marry. Their men don't usually make much more money than they did. Maybe they'll have one child; maybe none. Then pretty soon after they're married they'll go back to work.And keep at it till they're too old to get a job."

  Delph broke another bean. "It's not always like that. Is it?"

  "Oh, no. Some get better jobs and better men. They don't all get in a rut."

  "That's what I thought, some's bound to succeed," Delph said, and straightened her shoulders, but continued to look fixedly at the beans as she talked. "I know a girl back in th' Little South Fork country. Her people wouldn't let her go away to learn anything. She married, an' now she has a babya little girlan' some money, enough to keep her in some city till she learned to make her own livin', I guess. Her man, he's a funny onegivin' up a good job inth' timber business to farm. He's so smart an' young an' strong. He could make his way in any world. An'she hated to see him molder an' rot an' kill himself with work on a." Her eagerness carried her away and she forgot and lifted her head to find Emma's eyes searching over

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  her face. She flushed and bent hastily back to her work, but after a time went on in a slower, more careful voice, "She's always botherin' me with letterswonderin' what she ought to do. Don'tdon't you think it's better for her to at least make a tryfor her baby? An' when she went away her man would come, tooI think.An' that way in th' end her baby an' her man, they'd both be better off."

  Emma seemed uncertain of what the girl in the Little South Fork country should do, but sat and stirred the beans in her lap, and looked up at a flock of feathery mares' tails, silvery white in the high calm sky. "Off hand, I'd say," she explained after a time, "that any girl with a good man like that ought to stick by him, but thensince I don't know this girl, I couldn't say what was right for her."

  "II never did know what to tell her either," Delph said, and she, too, studied the feathery clouds. "Always she wanted to go away.She used to think on it a lotyou see I knew her right well. She read books an' magazines, an' studied maps like minean' listened to radios.An' sometimes it seemed to her. I thinkrecollect I knew her right wellthat maybe out there she'd feel more at home, somehow, than with her own people in th' back hills. An' all that tryin' to find out how it would be, made her want to go more than everI guess.An' she knows, I think, that when her baby gets older heshe'll be that way, too."

  When Delph's voice had trailed away in slow uncertain words, Emma leaned her chair against the house wall and sat with her head resting on the back of one arm. "I guess nobody would ever know what to tell that girl in the Little South Fork country," she said after a time of looking over the river. "It's like a fever in a body's bones, I guess. Still, if she went away she'd maybe think sometimes that it was nice back home. She could get old and die and never know, just go always wondering."

  Delph smiled. "At least, when she goes away, she'll never have to wonder how it feels bakin' cornbread twice a day, always mixin' it th' same, one egg, plenty of buttermilk an' a dash of clabbered cream. Her man likes it that way. An' then washin' th' same dishes in th' same pan ever' day an'Pshaw, I sound like Sadie Huffacre."

  Emma laughed at mention of Sadie Huffacre. "Don't let that gossip worry you," she said. "I'll always remember the year I graduated from high school, twelve years ago it was. She told all over the country that

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  Mom was too hard up to buy me a white graduation dress, and took down the lace curtains in the parlor to make me one."

  "An' it ever word a lie of course," Delph said.

  Emma smiled. "Mom always said it was a great injustice both to her and th' dressone of the prettiest I ever had. She had two old lace bedspreads, thin lace and pretty, but meant to be spread over silk. They'd belonged to our fath
er's mother or grandmother. Mom said she'd never have silk to put under 'em, and that they'd never go for a better cause. She made them up, patched the holes with scraps of lace, and I've never had a prettier dress since.The shade's all the way up the hill, and I promised Mom I'd be home and cook supper." And Emma jumped up, put on her bonnet and started home.

  Delph walked with her to the river. There, Emma as she unlocked the skiff seemed strangely embarrassed and confused while she said with her eyes held carefully on the boat, "Delph, I've thought it over, an' I think if I were you I'd tell that girl in the Little South Fork country to stay at homeat least till she's certainwell, that her man would come too."

  Delph smoothed her apron and kicked at a clam shell with the toe of her shoe. "She couldn't ever' be certain 'til she's tried it," she said.

  Emma sprang into the skiff, but lingered a moment leaning on an oar. "Delph, I've just thought of something I know you'd like to have for Burr-Heada map of Fairyland I bought once, a long time ago, but, pshaw, I'll never be using it, and it's too pretty to go to waste. It shows Jack-in-th'-Beanstalk's country, and the gingerbread house, andoh, a lot of things you'll be telling him about one of these days."

  Delph thanked her and kicked at another clam shell as she said, "I wonder, Emma, would it be too much trouble, I'd pay you whatever it cost, for you to get me when you go there a map of New York City? I've always wanted onejustjust a foolish notion, I guess."

  "I'll send you one," Emma promised.

  And Delph as she walked back from the river wished she hadn't asked. Emma had not seemed half so eager to give her the map of New York City as the one of Fairyland. She went upstairs and took the deed and the bank book from under her feather bed. She looked at them a long while, then went to stand by a window and watch

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  Marsh as he cut tobacco. He went at the work viciously, she thought, fighting it as he had fought the plowing last summer. She thought of jovial Mr. Elliot, never fighting, never knowing the taste of his sweat or the feel of dirt in his shoes. Tonight he would be pleasant and talkative; Marsh would drop by the table, silent, too tired to do anything but eat.

  He was that night much as she had expected, wordless and preoccupied, thinking mostly of the tobacco. The work of tobacco cutting was new to him. The hard work of splitting, sticking, loading, and hanging the plants used every muscle in his body. And though he had to make speed, for all the tobacco was ripe, he must continually treat the stuff as if it were some delicate mixture of eggs and tender young animals; something that would both break and bruise, blister if left too long in the sun, and rot if taken too wet to the barn. The work was further embittered by the growing realization that all his work and Delph's work would most likely amount to very little; tobacco prices continued to fall.

  So great was his relief when he had finished the cutting late on a Friday afternoon that he decided to do a thing he had not done all summer; give himself the treat of a whole Saturday in Hawthorne Town. He would go to the stock markets, spend a time in Roan's office, for there he usually learned some new and interesting thing, and maybe hear a brighter prediction for the winter's tobacco market. Delph would like the little trip. She had been scarcely off the place, except to church, since coming home.

  However, his plan for a holiday, seemed only half a plan when that night at supper, Delph, after listening to his suggestion, grew remote and secretive as she was at times, and said she thought she'd better stay at home. He argued in vain. Caesar would see to it that no one came meddling. Solomon wouldn't break out of his pasture. Burr-Head wouldn't fall sick or die if she missed seeing him before sundown, and the apple drying could wait a day. She had enough dried to feed Cox's Army with Sober's family thrown in. But Delph only primped her lips and said flatly that she wouldn't go; it would be a long hot drive in the wagon, and if she wanted to do any trading later on, she could go with Elliots in their car. They were always inviting her to go.

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  Marsh made a few remarks concerning Mr. Elliot that did not help the situation, and under his scorn and anger hid the hurt that Delph should not want to go to Hawthorne Town with him. He had planned to take her to a picture show; she had seen scarcely half a dozen in her life.

  Next morning he drove away immediately after breakfast, too angry to ask her if there were any supplies she wanted. And the pettiness of his doings goaded him all through the drive. But once in Town his troubles with Delph were gradually dwarfed by a multitude of others. He first saw Poke Easy, who had come out with his mother's truck to visit the stock yards and pick up a few thin cows or young steers for grazing in the fall.

  School at Lexington was only three days away, and Poke Easy, smelling of liquor and looking sad as his sister Katy when she cried, though he could not tell exactly where he had left his truck, was filled with remembering. Marsh saw him on the courthouse steps, standing alone, just looking over the court house lawn. "Do you realize, Marsh, that this time next year Robert Jonathan Fairchild will be a lawyer in Chicago with his brother Joseph Ezekiel? Always after that he can come home an' look at this, just look. He won't ever be a part of it any more." And he waved his arms toward the court house lawn where little groups of miners and farmers stood, talking and eating watermelon under the beech and maple trees, and hill men fiddled their tunes or whittled in the shade.

  "You ought to a thought a that a long time ago," Marsh said, and followed him as he teetered down the steps and across the lawn.

  Poke Easy went to sit on a bronze and granite marker of Casimir Pulaski under a silver maple tree. "Aye, it'll be fine," he said, and swayed gently on the stone. "Twenty years from now I'll be old an' fat an' bald. I may even look important. I've got a damned good tongue. Both my father and my mother had good tongues. My great-great-great grandfather Peter Alexander Fairchild, Esquire, he was the first judge of this county. He had a good tongue, too. He had this marker put here. He'd fought with th' man, so I've heard. Nobody recollects him any morenor Pulaski. Peter Alexander never went awayand so he couldn't amount to anything."

  He got up, looked uncertainly about him, then climbed on top of the stone, and stood swaying and waving his arms. "When I visit

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  home old Reuben Dick will make it front page stuff on th' Westover Bugle. Teachers will hold me up to the school children. 'He went off an' made good,' they'll say. 'Go thou an' do likewise,' they'll say. Fellow citizens as I have told you I have a damned good tongue. I've got brains too. I could win cases. I could make connections. I might even go into politics. Sirs, am I not a Kentuckian? Every Kentuckian is a politician else he could not remain a Kentuckian. But every man from our eleventh Congressional DistrictGod Bless it, Sirsis twice a politician. If he were not he would not long remain alive. Some day I will be important, I shall interview country boys studying law. I shall slap them on the back and shake their hands, like this." And Poke Easy swayed toward a grinning hill man and shook hands before continuing, "Your record is good I shall say. We like good sensible, steady goin' country boys.Aye, my friends, th' purpose of these hills is to give not only oil an' coal an' timber, cattle, corn, and tobacco, but children. I shall offer him a cigar, a twenty-five cent onehell, no, I'll make it fifty, an' I shall say."

  Marsh would listen to no more. Poke Easy was rapidly drawing a crowd, and it seemed a sin that the marker given by one brave man in memory of another should be so desecrated. He pulled the protesting Poke Easy through the crowd, and since there seemed no other suitable place, he took him to the small saloon and restaurant at the end of Maple Street around the corner from the Baptist church.

  He had scarcely got settled with a drink for himself and buttermilk for Poke Easy when he heard Perce's loud bellow from a corner of the room. Perce was drinking heavily, and explaining what he intended to do with his tobacco. Of course his corn wouldn't bring much either. There was a bumper crop of corn but he could feed it out to his wife and children and hogs and cows. The tobacco was what worried him. He had
never yet been able to train a single thing about his place to eat tobacco leaves, but he'd be damned if the market went to the bottom as was now predicted if'd he sell his crop. He would buy a pipe for his wife Lizzie, teach all the boys to chew and Little Lizzie to smoke cigarettes, and they would use it up before they'd give it away.