by Mary Salyers
* * *
An hour later Maggie sat on a low stool with the milk pail between her knees. The crown of her head pressed against Big Red’s flank as she bent forward to reach the milk-swollen udders. During her tenth summer, her father had taught her to milk, and it became her job to milk their two cows every evening while her father did the morning milking.
Now that her father did not have to be home in the evening in time to milk, he often got an extra hour or two working as a laborer for other farmers in the area. For the last two years, he also had raised corn and hay on Mrs. Robinson’s farm for half the produce. Maggie admired the way her father worked so hard to make things better for the family. He finally had saved enough to hire a well digger. They no longer had to carry water from the spring up the road, but they did have to draw up the water and carry it into the house. If they could get through the summer with no setbacks and have a good harvest, maybe by winter they could have the pump installed and bring the water into the kitchen.
Maggie thought about the many differences between her parents. Her father’s calm demeanor, his sense of fairness, his delight in the accomplishments of the children, and his optimistic outlook contrasted sharply with her mother’s approach to life. “Like day and night,” she said aloud. However, she had to admit her mother was no slacker. Feeding and clothing a large family with their meager resources–a never ending job–Corie Mae managed with great competence, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. In that respect her parents were alike–both working from before daylight until after dark day after day.
Maggie lifted her head to wipe the sweat from her eyes with her sleeve. She extended her lower lip and blew her breath up over her face. Earlier she had pinned her heavy braids on top of her head. Now she repositioned the bobby pins, which had worked loose. Wonder how JD made out. Hope he didn’t get beat up too bad. Maggie rubbed her face with her other sleeve before she rested her head against Big Red’s side and resumed milking. The cow’s body had collected all the heat of the day, and now it radiated out stifling her breath and making her feel faint.
When she finished, she stood, carefully lifting the pail of milk brimming with white foam. With her free hand, she pulled her sweat-soaked tee shirt away from her homemade bra, letting in some air, then picked up the three-legged stool and turned toward the door. Maggie carried the pail to the small feed room and carefully covered it with the lid. She took the lead strap from the nail near the door and turned to get Curly, Big Red’s calf, from his pen on the east side of the barn.
Back toward the highway, the sky swirled with coal-black clouds, and the air felt cooler Probably means a hail storm’s on the way. Better get Curley and Bossy into the barn right quick before the storm hits. Once she finished milking Bossy, Maggie grabbed both pails of milk, rushing to get inside before the rain came. About halfway to the house, Maggie felt the first drops. The strong wind flattened her skirt against her legs, and she bent forward as the wind pushed against her. Running as fast as she could without spilling the milk, she reached the kitchen door just as the hail began to rat-a-tat-tat on the tin roof.
In the kitchen, Maggie strained the milk through a muslin cloth into four half-gallon canning jars and tightened the lids. Since the Martins had no refrigerator, Stuart, her nine-year-old brother, would take the milk to Aunt Opal’s refrigerator when the rain stopped.
The rain and hail hammered the roof, and the fierce wind howled like a banshee. Maggie could barely hear her mother and her younger brothers and sisters in the front room. Through the kitchen doorway Maggie could see her mother sitting in her rocking chair holding six-month-old Jay hugged tightly to her thin, petite body, her brown eyes full of fear. The children knelt or sat on the floor around her. When a clap of thunder sounded, Corie Mae put her hands over her ears and scrunched down as if dodging an attacker. Jay began to cry.
From all her agitation, Corie Mae’s dark braids, which she usually wore wrapped around her head, drooped below her ears. “Sing, you all, and pray,” she yelled. “God deliver us from this storm!” Then she began singing “Rock of Ages,” rocking in time to the music and motioning for the children to join in. Maggie glanced out the kitchen window and saw the trees bending in the wind, while the hail continued to pelt the roof. Wow! I hope that wind doesn’t blow a tree over on the house. We don’t often have a storm this bad. No wonder Mama’s so afraid.
Maggie had heard her mother tell many times about getting struck by lightning as a teenager. Corie Mae had stood beside the stove stirring a pot of soup beans, when the electric current from the lightning had moved down the chimney, knocking Corie Mae back against the kitchen cabinet. Guess if it had happened to me, I’d panic too. Maggie frowned, feeling a twinge of guilt for judging her mother.
Maggie had finished washing the milk pails when a sudden flash of lightning crackled, and thunder shook the house. The dogs, huddling under the porch, yipped and whined, and the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling went out. “Margaret Frances, get in here right now!” Corie Mae ordered.
* * *
The wind and fury of the storm passed after a half hour, but the rain continued to fall in torrents. After finishing the supper dishes by the light of a kerosene lamp, Maggie pointed to the milk jars. “Mama. I guess it doesn’t make sense to take the milk to Aunt Opal’s since the power’s off. Should I take it down to the spring?”
“Yes, Maggie, you should. This rain’s probably flooded the spring house, so make sure the water ain’t over the tops of the jars. You can carry the jars in the bushel basket that’s on the back porch.” As Maggie went out the back door, Corie Mae called, “Come right back. We got a lot of work to do tomorrow. I want you in bed early.”
Fortunately, the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. Once on the dirt road, Maggie saw water swirling in the ditches, overflowing the road in places. A tree had blown across the fence, and in the near dark, Maggie noticed the rain had washed a gully down the middle of the cornfield. A muddy lake stood in the low place opposite the house. Maggie dodged the puddles as best she could in the dim light, but so much mud stuck to her shoes, she could hardly lift her feet.
“Hey, Mag. Wait up.”
Maggie turned and saw JD coming down the road, his wet shirt sticking to him like an extra skin. “You okay?”
When JD reached her, he took one handle of the basket. “Yeah, I guess I’ll live.”
“You look like death warmed over. How’d the fight turn out? Last I saw from the bus, you two really laid into each other.”
“I gave old Walter as good as he gave me. He got in a few good licks, but he quit the fight. I bet both his eyes’ll be black by morning. I know I knocked a tooth or two loose cause he spit out blood, and my hand hurts like hell.”
Until a couple of years earlier when the Rural Electric Co-op finally brought electric lines up the holler, the spring, a few yards off the road between their two houses, had served both families. It not only had kept their milk and other foods cool, it had also provided all their water. JD helped Maggie position the jars of milk on a ledge where the spring water flowed around them.
“Do you think Aunt Opal’ll be mad?” Maggie knew Opal had a violent temper and would beat the boys over the smallest infractions.
“She’ll probably take a belt to me.”
“I’m going with you. I’ll tell Aunt Opal Walter Spinks started it.”
“Thanks, Cuz, but I don’t think you can talk her out of it.”
“At least I can try.”
They went to the back of JD’s house, stepped up onto the porch, and slipped off their muddy shoes before going into the lamp-lit kitchen.
“Oh my God! Where have you been? I been worried sick.” Aunt Opal dried her hands and stepped away from the dishpan. “How come you didn’t come home on the bus?”
“I got off at Spinks. Had some business with Walter.”
“What sort of business?”
JD ignored her question. “I had got almost up to the holler when the stor
m started. I sat on Wilson’s porch until the worst passed.”
Aunt Opal grabbed JD’s arm. “Answer my question!”
JD shook his arm loose, pulled a chair from the kitchen table, and sat down. He reached for a piece of cornbread which sat on the table. “Something personal. Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that!” She jerked JD’s face toward the light of the kerosene lamp on the kitchen table. “You’ve been in a fight, ain’t you? Here I been worrying my head off, afraid you was hit by lightning or something and you’re picking a fight.” She reached for the belt that hung on the kitchen wall. “You know I don’t allow no fighting.”
“He didn’t start it, Aunt Opal.” Maggie stepped between them. “Walter Spinks hit Johnny Ray and made him cry.”
“Nobody asked you. Now get yourself back home and mind your own business. This don’t concern you.” Aunt Opal pointed toward the door.
Maggie took a few steps toward the door. “Please, don’t whip him, Aunt Opal.”
“I said go!” Aunt Opal gave Maggie a push out the back door.
Maggie dallied putting on her muddy shoes, trying to listen. She stepped off the porch and stood in the shadows.
After two or three licks, JD yelled, “That’s enough, Mama!”
Whack. “I’ll decide when it’s enough!” Whack.
With each lash, JD yelled louder. Maggie watched their shadows dancing about the room and heard the crash of a chair turning over. Finally JD dashed out the door with Aunt Opal still thrashing him. As he jumped off the porch, he scooped up his shoes and ran around the corner of the house. Maggie, on the opposite side of the porch, slowly backed deeper into the shadows.
“You come back here or I’ll beat the tar out of you.” Aunt Opal yelled into the night, but JD didn’t answer, and Aunt Opal finally went back into the house. Slipping and sliding in the mud, Maggie ran down the road hoping to catch up with JD, but she couldn’t see him. When she reached her home, she gave up. I can’t imagine where he could have gone. Since she saw no lamplight in her house, Maggie thought everyone had gone to bed. She sat on the back porch taking off her shoes when the screen door suddenly flung open. She jumped up quickly.
Corie Mae grabbed Maggie’s arm. “I thought I told you to come straight back. Where you been all this time?”
“JD got caught in the storm. I went to see if he got home.” Maggie pulled her arm out of Corie Mae’s grip.
“Don’t be giving me any sass, young lady.”
“I’m not, Mama. I just answered your question.” Maggie walked around her mother and opened the screen door.
“Don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you.”
“Mama, I’m all muddy. I need to light a lamp and wash up so I can go to bed.”
“Just because you got all A’s on your grade card, don’t think you’re too smart to do as you’re told.” Corie Mae followed Maggie into the house and watched as she lit a lamp. “You might have more education than me, but that don’t mean you can do as you please. I’ll not have you disobeying.”
“You don’t need to yell at me, Mama. I took the milk to the spring house and went to check on JD.” She washed her face and scrubbed the mud off her ankles and legs. “I don’t know why you’re so mad. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Looks to me like you’s getting above your raising.” Corie Mae turned her back and went through the front room to her bedroom.
Puzzled by the strength of her mother’s animosity, Maggie blew out the lamp and carefully felt her way to the narrow steep stairs leading to her bedroom on the second floor. Surprised to find both her sisters already asleep, she stripped off her clothes and put on her nightgown. Lying in bed in the pitch-black darkness, she felt much too agitated for sleep. Why does she think I’ll disobey her just because I have more education than she does? What’s she afraid of? I don’t understand. She fluffed her pillow and turned on her side. At least she looked at my grades.
* * *
The next morning Maggie opened her eyes and lay quietly listening to the birds. The sunlight streamed through the little window beside the bed, which she shared with Betty Lou, her twelve-year-old sister. Ten-year-old Jeannie slept across the small room on a makeshift bed her father had built into the wall. Through the open doorway, she could see into the other small bedroom on the second floor where her father had built bunk beds for nine-year-old Stuart and seven-year-old Johnny Ray. All of them slept on mattresses filled with corn husks. Four-year-old Junior and six-month-old Jay shared the downstairs bedroom with her parents.
Being careful so she wouldn’t disturb the sleeping children, she dressed and went down the stairs into the front room. The sun made a puddle of light on the braided rug Maggie’s mother had made using strips of cloth from worn out sheets and old clothes. Near the front door stood the grandfather clock great-grandma had brought with her from Kentucky when she had married Great-grandpa Campbell. It no longer worked, but her mother valued it as one of the “nice” things in her home. The hand-carved rocking chair, which her mother prized, also had belonged to Great-grandma Campbell.
Through the window, Maggie saw her father sitting in the porch swing smoking his pipe. She walked out, making sure the screen door didn’t slam.
“Good morning, Sunshine.”
“Hi, Daddy. We worried when you hadn’t got home by dark last night.” Maggie sat beside him.
“I think that was the worst storm I ever seen. I stayed at Mrs. Robinson’s until the worst of it passed over. They’s a big ditch washed all the way across the road before you get to Johnsons. It’s so deep a car or a wagon can’t cross it. Me and the preacher’ll have to repair the road soon as it dries up a little.”
“Do you want me to do the morning milking now that school’s out?”
“Yes, that will help a lot, but I already done the milking this morning. I’m glad you left the cows in the barn last night. Trees have blowed over in a couple places and tore down the fences. We’ll have to fix them before we let the cows back in the lower pasture.” Ray smoked in silence for a few moments. “I guess the ‘lectric’s out everywhere cause all the houses was dark when I come home. We’re lucky that the crops ain’t very high yet, but the hard rain washed some fields out, so I reckon we’ll have to replant them.”
Maggie watched her father lift his head to blow the smoke toward the porch ceiling. She noticed his clean-shaven face. Grandma Campbell often commented that Ray Martin was the only man she knew who shaved every day before working in the fields. Maggie liked the way his deep blue eyes often twinkled with humor. She felt fortunate to have inherited his tall build and fair complexion. His hard work through the years, mostly outside, had given him a rugged, seasoned look, somewhat older than his thirty-six years.
“Soon as I finish this coffee, I’m fixing to check on your grandma and grandpa. After you eat, I want you to take the cows to the pasture behind the cornfield where none of the fences is down. If the preacher’s able, I aim to work with him and the boys to cut up the trees that blowed over.”
It always amused her when her daddy called his father-in-law “the preacher.” Grandpa Campbell had only a fourth-grade education, and he had never had a church, but he did call himself a preacher. Sometimes a Pentecostal church invited him to preach. His religion, taken mostly from his Kentucky relatives, included snake-handling and speaking-in-tongues. Occasionally he got a ride to a church near Newport where he knew some people would take up the serpents. When Ray had married Corie Mae and come to live in the old home place, he made clear to his father-in-law that his family would not go to a Pentecostal church. He would take his new wife to the Baptist church a couple of miles down the road.
After knocking out the ashes, Ray put his pipe in the pocket of his bib overalls. He handed Maggie his coffee cup, pulled on his muddy boots, and gave her a good-bye salute.
As she made her way to the barn, Maggie detoured from the path in several places to avoid deep mud. Even
so, with each step her father’s old shoes, which she always wore to the barn, slurped like sucking the last of a Coca-Cola through a straw. When she opened the feed room door to get the lead straps for the cows, she gasped. JD sat behind the big wooden barrel that held the cow feed. “You scared me! What you doing here?”
JD stood up. Now Maggie could see his black eye and a bad bruise on his left jaw. “Wow! Spinks did leave some marks on you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not half as bad as what Mama done.” He turned his back and dropped his jeans. Maggie gasped again when she saw the bruises and welts. Blood had dried in streaks down his legs. He pulled up his pants and turned toward Maggie.
“I’m sorry, JD. I wish you had just let it go and stayed on the bus. Then you wouldn’t be in this trouble.”
“Heck, it was worth it, Mag. I told old Walter if he ever put a hand on you again, I’d knock the rest of his teeth out.”
“Now, that really makes me feel bad.”
“It’s not your fault. He’s had it coming. I should of jumped that bully a long time ago.”
Maggie kicked a corncob. “What’re you going to do now?”
“I’m leaving. I ain’t never going to let her beat me again. I knew she’d be mad, but there wasn’t no call to do this to me. When I finally got away from her, I came here and spent the night in your barn.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Hitchhike to Detroit and stay with Daddy. If I show up, I reckon he’ll have to take me in. Maybe I can just live with him till I graduate from high school. I’ll wait to leave till after dark tonight so nobody’ll see me leaving. Right now I’m starving. I didn’t have no supper. Do you think you can help me?”
“You better hide up in the hay loft till dark cause they’ll come looking for you. Daddy’s gone to check on Grandpa and Grandma. Then he planned to get you and Kenny to help repair fences and stuff. I’ll try to get down with some food as soon as I can. First, I have to take the cows to the back pasture.”