by Tillie Olsen
Surely it is classical enough for you—the Greek marble of the women, the simple, flowing lines of sorrow, carved so rigid and eternal. Surely it is original enough—these grotesques, this thing with the foot missing, this gargoyle with half the face gone and the arm. In the War to Live, the artist, Coal, sculptured them. It was his Master hand that wrought the intricate mosaic on this face—splintered coal inlaid with patches of skin and threads of rock … You will have the cameo? Call it Rascoe, Wyoming, any of a thousand towns in America, the night of a mine blowup. And inside carve the statement the company already is issuing. “Unavoidable catastrophe … (O shrink, super’s nephew, fire boss that let the gas collect) … rushing equipment … bending every effort … sparing no expense … to save—or recover the bodies …”
(Dear Company. Your men are imprisoned in a tomb of hunger, of death wages. Your men are strangling for breath—the walls of your company town have clamped out the air of freedom. Please issue a statement. Quick, or they start to batter through with the fists of strike, with the pickax of revolution.)
A cameo of this, then. Blood clot of the dying sunset and the hush. No sobs, no word spoken. Sorrow is tongueless. Apprehension tore it out long ago. No sound, only the whimpering of children, blending so beautifully with the far cry of blown birds. And in the smothered light, carved hard, distinct, against the tipple, they all wait. The wind, pitying, flings coal dust into their eyes, so almost they could imagine releasing tears are stinging.
“He’ll be back.” Brought up quiet and shaken five days later. Gaunt and bearded so that Ben wailed when he saw him. “In March, Anna,” he said, “March, if I have to pick the sun outa the sky for a gold piece.”
Whispering—“Just give me one third for the scrip. Just one third cash. You know it’s worth more than that. I’ll buy the stuff for you, so they’ll think it’s me, and you pay me one third cash.”
Pushing the words out from where they stand so humbly in her throat. “I thought maybe around the holidays there might be extra work. Scrubbin or washin. I know you got a cook. I’m not askin much, just fifty cents the day.”
Fear. You got no business doin it, Jim, workin under loose roof like that.
But March—a new life … And they dont pay for pullin it down and clearin. And I cant do nothin unless I’m gettin paid for it.
“Ma. They growin chicory instead of coffee? Aint we ever gonna have coffee again?” “Ma, my teef hurts.”
“Ma, I can push my finger in Mazie’s skin and it goes in, way deep.”
“Ma, this all to eat, Ma?”
“In spring, in March, we’re goin, baby. Hushabye now. Hushabye. Momma’ll sing you to sleep.”
March. Raw with blistering winds and snow. I see even the weather’s against us. No use, we can’t leave. But April. April first for sure.
All winter his reckless work under loose roof, because pulling down and clearing meant unpaid labor. All winter the children puffing out with starch. All winter her hands cracking with the extra work.
But the decrepit wagon waits outside, and Jim pounds on an extra rude seat, a rough removable canopy. There is an ancient truck horse bargained for and promised. And sometimes clearing the coal, walking to work in the morning darkness, scrubbing his face, Jim stops suddenly, and thickly, out of his throat, utters, “April.” And Anna’s hand goes often over her heart, remembering new life words of hope spoken against the weave of a child’s delirious derisive laughter.
April at last. Delicate with shy greens and little winds blowing. A few of the women come to bid goodbye. And when Anna closes the door for the last time, quick, hard, dropping her hand from the latch, they watch as if it were a ceremony. Wistfulness is in their eyes, no envy. “Goodbye. Goodbye,” they chorus. But the Holbrooks do not look back, only Mazie once, but there is nothing left, only a shadow of culm, rearing against the sky. Over it small white clouds forming and dissolving—almost fairy hands, waving goodbye, goodbye.
THREE
Three days they jolted through Wyoming and west Nebraska. The black cuts of the buttes against the sky, the colors in them like striped fire, the great quiet desolation of the mesa they passed, filled Mazie with some strange unhappiness, more like happiness than anything she had ever known. Anna felt like a bride; riding along, she sang and sang. Sometimes Jim whistled or sang with her in a depthless bass voice. And the wagon made gay silvery sounds accompanying them, and the sun laid warm hands on their backs.
The fourth day they came to South Dakota—breaths caught in sharp wonder at the green stretching for miles, at the small streamlets like open silver veins on the ground, and here and there dots of cattle grazing, heads down. The air was pure and soft like a baby’s skin. “Breathe,” Anna said, “breathe it in, kids.” “Listen, Momma, there’s birds.” Birds, floating round shining bubbles of song on the air, jackrabbits rising suddenly from one end of the road to flee to the other.
And that day there was laughter. Nellie, refusing to trot, stopping stubbornly, haunches apart, head lifted up. In vain Jim beat her. When he clambered down to lead her; she galumphed away at a tremendous (for her) speed. Though Anna, frantic, tried to reach to dragging reins, the children screamed and laughed. Crazy, the wagon tipped, this side, that side. “Seesaw, Marjorie Daw,” Will began. And Nellie, with immense dignity, stopped.
Five minutes later Jim came puffing up. A farmer stopped his plowing to lean over the fence. “Ya oughta get a mule, I reckon. They’re not so stubborn.”
“She is a mule in disguise.” Jim climbed up again. But again she wouldn’t budge. Leisurely she cropped the grass at her side.
“How about the old grass-on-the-end-of-a-stick gag?” the farmer asked. “That’ll start her trottin.”
It did. Jim, with one foot on the step, felt the wagon jerk forward and barely swung himself up in time. Nellie didn’t wait to go for the food that hung tantalizingly beyond her nose. For two hours she ran, Jim precariously directing her with the reins over corners. Mazie stood up, her hands on the wagon seat, screaming with delight. The wind came over her body with a great rush of freedom; freedom and joy tingled to her hair roots. Anna swayed back and forth, clutching her hat and the baby, laughing too. Ridiculous Nellie with her huge buttocks moving in frenzied rhythm, the wagon bumping along after, and the wheels making their singy laughter. Laughter came from the skies, blowing something that was more than coal dust out of their hearts.
The sky tinged leaden. Enormous shadows began to shift over the face of the prairie, and above the whole sky came gray, with dull silver undersides to the clouds. Cold, the wind whirled from the north. Nellie set her head stubbornly against it, plodding along. Jim stopped to stretch the canopy over them, telling the children to scurry into their coats.
The wind began running a long hand under the dust, stirring it into a dervish dance. A steady moaning came from the grasses. Mazie leaned forward to catch the feel of the wind on her face—something seemed clawing in her to be out running with it. Anna for some reason was laughing.
A cold tongue licked their cheeks—snow. Jim shouted back, “Cover up with them blankets and throw another up here, Mazie. You better go back with the kids, Anna,” and Mazie crept forward. The sky was invisible now. When she lifted her face, the snow stung like nails. Mistily she could see her father —on his face a look of being intoxicated, his heavy brown hair blowing back, his blue eyes glittering. The snow fell thicker. The wind whirled it like a dancing skirt. Even following the road was difficult. The fences alone helped. And nowhere was there a farmhouse. Mazie did not care—it was enough to stumble on like this forever through a white whirling world. The wagon sank. Nellie pulled bravely but in vain. Jim got out. The back wheels were sunk deep in what had been a spring pool of water, under the snow.
“What’s the matter?” Anna’s shout came faintly.
“We’re stuck,” he yelled back—the futility of voices yelling loud but coming out like babies’ piping voices obsessed him. With head down Jim pulled aga
inst the wind to win to the front of the wagon again. Snow was blowing in from the open front. “It’ll be a minute.”
Mazie awkwardly fought her way after her dad, watched him lay down in the snow, put his shoulder under the wheel. His body tautened, the wheel jerked. Again he straightened out tense, and the wheel lifted. Jim held the weight of the wagon on him, not knowing what to do next. Slowly he wriggled his body to the right, then crept from under. Mazie could hear his hoarse breathing pulsating with the wind. He was fumbling along the roadside, edging a rock on the ground under the other wheel. “Roll it under when I lift it up again,” he commanded. Again, with terrible strength he lifted the wheel. To Mazie, her fingers frozen, rolling the rock seemed to take forever. Trembling, she got it under.
In an hour they found a small town, crouched in a hollow. In a one-story “hotel” run by an obese Swede and his lanky wife, they got shelter. She caressed the children, made a crackling fire, rubbed their hands, put on hot water for footbaths, exchanged recipes with Anna, talked of the marvelous farming country around Zell, where they were going.
Mazie, shivering before the fire, her eyes closed, remembered the feel of the wind and the culm left behind.
The morning was a dim smear of light. Jim, looking at the white country, shook his head. No travelin today. The sun made a wan smile of the afternoon, and all night the melting snow dripped, dripped. Morning came, and the road was clear but muddy. Ben cried at leaving the gaunt lady.
Two days later, the weather shining again, they came to a rise. Looking down, they could see for miles. Far east rolled the hills, the near ones flat brown, washed over with delicate green, the far ones repeating themselves over and over till they faded into blue hazes and dull mists—indistinct blurs of lines against the spring sky.
Below lay the farms, uneven patches of brown and plowed black and transparent green, and far stretched the river, dull yellow in the sun, glinting crystal, where the wind stirred it. Tiny as a toy, a man was plowing a thin thread of black in the brown square of field immediately below them.
Everyone’s eyes were shining with wonder and promise. “We’ll be living somewhere beyond that,” Jim said, with a gesture of joy and freedom illimitable (goodbye, mole’s life, goodbye, you’re far behind me now); Willie babbled childishly of the man, grown so tiny, and the baby stretched his arms and crowed. One joy lay in their hearts like a warmth—hope. “A new life,” Anna said, “in the spring.”
With dusk a softness crept over the land. They were down in the lowlands now. Low curves cut into the sky. The earth glowed with reflected color, like light under green water, and Anna and Jim began singing, “Down in the valley, valley so low, hang your head over, feel the wind blow.”
Willie slumbered against Mazie’s shoulder. Ben drowsily had his head in her lap, staring into the depthless transparent green above. Even the gay tinkle of the wheel came subdued and the clop of Nellie’s hoofs incredibly hushed and beautiful. “Roses love nightwinds, violets love dew, angels in heaven, know I love you.” Their voices were slow curving rhythms, slow curving sounds. Voices, rising and twining, beauty curving on rainbows of quiet sound, filled their hearts heavy, welled happy tears to Mazie’s eyes.
Anna singing, “In the gloaming, oh my darling, when the lights are dim and low,” with bright eyes folded and unfolded memories of past years—plans for the years to come. School for the kids, Jim working near her, on the earth, lovely things to keep, brass lamps, bright tablecloths, vines over the doors, and roses twining. A memory, unasked, plunged into her mind—her grandmother bending in such a twilight over lit candles chanting in an unknown tongue, white bread on the table over a shining white tablecloth and red wine—she broke into the song to tell Jim of it …
They reached the farm at midnight. Anna had awakened Mazie so she could see. There were flatter fields, low houses, some with towers her father softly pointed out as silos. Sometimes Jim got out and fumbled with a match before a mailbox or signpost. At last there came a low rambling place, with three trees dwarfing it and barn larger than the house looming in the back. Above the stars glistened—and two twin stars hung over the roof. “The place,” Jim said.
Mazie, sleepy, lay down immediately on the mattress stretched for her and, with Will and Ben breathing quietly beside her, fell asleep at once. Jim spent another hour getting the barn open, moving the one bed they had taken with them in and setting it up. Then he and Anna too slept. And into their sleep wove a dream of beauty curving on rainbows of quiet sound over a land that stretched into mist, in which one figure, tiny as a toy, plowed a black thread in a square of brown.
FOUR
The farm. Oh Jim’s great voice rolling over the land. Oh Anna, moving rigidly from house to barn so that the happiness with which she brims will not jar and spill over. Oh Mazie, hurting herself with beauty. Oh Will, feeling the eggs and radishes gurgle down his throat, tugging the woolly neck of the dog with reckless joy. Oh Ben, feeling smiles around and security.
Well, what of Benson? stoop-shouldered neighbor and his “I tell you, you cant make a go of it. Tenant farmin is the only thing worse than farmin your own. That way you at least got a chance a good year, but tenant farmin, bad or good year, the bank swallows everything up, and keeps you owin ’em. You’ll see.”
But land is here. Days falling freely into large rhythms of weather. Feet sinking into plowed earth, the plow making a bright furrow. Corn coming swiftly up. Tender green stalks with thin outer shoots, like grass. Oh Momma come look! Oh Daddy come look! Oh Mazie come look! Drama of things growing. You’re browning, children. The world is an oven, and you’re browning in it. How good the weariness—in the tiredness, the body may dream. How good the table, with the steam arising from the boiled potatoes and vegetables and the full-bellied pitcher of milk.
Around the house, the earth is hoed up for truck. Mazie and Will do the weeding, help feed the chickens, bring the cow from pasture, wring out the clothes. But strangely there is time. Sometimes Mazie pads with bare feet across the waving corn to the road—to watch the carriages and wagons bump by. When there are gay little girls sitting high and proud in the buggies, ribbons in their hair blowing a long streamer in the wind, shame and envy shudder over her, and she draws herself together to make herself nothing, to lose herself in the faded gray dress on her body. Then the sun and wind rippling over her skin, and the gold corn moving against the sky lull her into beauty again with the slenderest arms of rhythm.
Sometimes the neighbors come. Benson, he of the stoop shoulders, as if for all his six feet he were trying to get closer to the earth. Two furrows live on his brow and a curious compassion in his eyes. A compassion that is weariness and despair. He will start to talk of a new way of planting, of the good weather, and then cease suddenly, the compassion gray where the living was before. Missis Ellis, round and laughing, sure of touch, knowing the helplessness of newborn animals, how to bring animals and women out of labor, her voice the timbre of earth. She laughs, but a kernel of worry hides under the laughter. Her father is old Caldwell, pioneer, who had come west from college and wealth and chosen to live and build out of the wilderness.
Jim’s big barn was the accustomed place for the midsummer dance in mid-July. Two days before, neighbor women came to prepare the floor, bring food, help with the cooking. Anna sewed over her good dress, bought bright ribbons recklessly for Mazie and herself, washed and starched the children’s clothes.
The laughter of summer was on the earth. Trees, rich and voluptuous, flowered by the roadside, brimming fields of corn waved in the sun, roses were in bloom, and the days were bright with the colored balls of song, birds tossed back and forth.
The night of the dance was luminous with moonlight. Winds rushed over the fields, faded to small breezes, subsided into stillness, gathered again. Trees dipped and curtsied, the corn rippling like a girl’s skirt. Very low, very misty, very tender, the stars shone, and over all flowered the smell of growing things, of fecund earth, overpowering.
/> Mazie, with the green ribbon glowing on her head, felt like spring. To her, Anna, with her black eyes laughing, her black hair smooth and shiny to purple, was the handsomest woman there. But everyone had a look of beauty about them.
Withered and small, the fiddler seemed too frail for any sturdy music, but at his side the guitar and harmonica player rose strong and capable. The caller stood in the middle. The circle eights formed. Then the music rocked in the air. Some of the dancers were young girls and boys, quick of step, their laughter rising like a froth, quick colors, step on step, bubble on bubble. Most were middle-aged men, women, still young, if not in body. They gave themselves easily to the dance, backs curved, skirts flying round and round. Round and round in the intricate steps, and, at the end of each circle eight, the men gave out a long cry that beat up the blood. Summer was in their hearts, high summer.
Swiftly the summer days blended into one another. Heat throbbed like a great anvil, and hot glassy air shimmered over the dusty-smelling corn. Or a burst of rain would come, “in a great glistening mesh. Nights were vast and fragrant with wind and stars and the wavering sound of far frogs. Weariness, like armor, over their bodies, Jim and Anna would sit in the blue night; Anna, her head against the top step of the porch, caressing the flowers in her lap as if they were about to vanish; Jim, puffing a pipe, trying to empty his mind, keep it motionless on the now, not on the past or what might come. The breath of the moon, mist and silver, lay on the fields; the flowers clustered in bright shadows in the darkness. After a long while Anna would laugh, a strange mirthless laugh, and rise to go into the house. Then Jim, too, would follow, knocking the ashes out of his pipe onto the vine, giving a last broad look over the night and the earth. Sometimes seeing them sit so in the night, a sharp unhappiness would pierce the golden haze in Mazie’s heart; but the blur of days descending so swiftly would wash it out again.