From her home in Charlottesville, Shirley Caudwell wrote to Blanche, enclosing a snapshot of herself on horseback. She wanted Blanche to come and visit her in the summer. Would she like to? Although Blanche liked horses, she was silently noncommittal. Sharon felt obliged to point out that if she visited Shirley she would meet her three sisters, see their wonderful farm, and be driven about in a tassel-fringed buggy. Blanche’s habit, while listening to Sharon, was to crumble up pieces of her art-gum eraser and shoot them across the table with a flick of her fingernail. More vexing to Sharon was her habit of trying to conceal the very food she was eating, as if it were something stolen, or denied her, slipping it into her mouth with her head to one side, covertly. Was that something she had learned at the school? Sharon was reluctant to bring it up since it would surely diminish her interest in food. It would be just like her to simply stop eating, rather than be observed.
Late in April, a warm drizzly Saturday, the trees leafing, Sharon walked through the park to the pond boathouse, where she was accustomed to meet Blanche for a soft drink or a dish of ice cream. Because of the drizzle, only water birds were out on the pond. Blanche was usually at a table she liked in the café, from where she could look out over the lagoon, but she was neither there nor down on the pier where the boats were rented. A long-suppressed anxiety regarding Blanche surged up in her like a fever. She waited ten minutes, then went back along the walk that led to the birdhouse. The only person she passed was an elderly man with a dog. Just to the right of the walk, in a storage shed where food was kept for the animals, her eye was caught by bales of yellow hay, almost luminous in the dim light. Seated on one of the bales, huddled closely, so that both could stroke a bird in the girl’s lap, a young man in overalls and red rubber boots had his left arm about the girl’s waist. Her head was lowered to look at the bird that she held, her legs dangling just short of the straw-littered floor. With one hand she held the bird, some sort of exotic chicken, and with the other she stroked its plumed, brightly hued topknot. The young man’s arm tightened about her waist as he inclined his head to touch her hair. Not lost on Sharon was his silly, conspiratorial smile. The sound that escaped her, an intake of breath, led the young man to glance up. Sharon stared at his beardless, oafish face, then he was gone into the barn’s shadows. Hardly aware of what had happened, Blanche raised her head to look at Sharon.
“Oh, Aunt Sharon! Look at the bird.”
With an effort, Sharon moved to look at it closely. Under its topknot was the head of a chicken.
“Where did you get it?”
“He brought it to me—” She looked behind her, then back to Sharon.
“We’d better see it’s put back where it belongs,” said Sharon, but Blanche would not be rushed. She stroked the bird, its eyes hypnotically half-lidded. Did Sharon feel they were much alike?
“Did you forget,” Sharon said, “that you were going to meet me?”
Yes, it seemed she had forgotten. “He brought me the bird.”
“You know him?”
“Oh, yes. His name is Jerry. He’s nice.”
As Sharon waited, she slipped off the bale of hay, permitted Sharon to dust off her skirt. They walked together in the drizzle to a caretaker raking up manure in one of the outdoor cages. “We found this bird,” Sharon said. “Would you take him?”
Blanche was reluctant to release it.
“It has its own friends,” Sharon said.
“Not that one,” replied the man. “That one’s a troublemaker.” He took the bird from her, leaned his rake on the fence, and went off with it.
“Chickens are birds,” said Blanche. “Did you know that?”
Actually, Sharon had not known it. Like Cora, she would have said that a chicken was a chicken. They walked together back to the apartment, where Sharon made some cinnamon toast. Nothing more was said of the matter. How close, Sharon wondered, had she come to an incident from which she, if not Blanche, might never have recovered? During the evening Blanche drew pictures of the bird’s head with its half-lidded eyes.
Sunday evening, with Blanche returned to the school, Sharon called Madge to say that Blanche’s year of schooling was drawing to a close. She had had a wonderful year, she was poised with people, could assert herself, and had put on some weight that showed in her face. But Sharon was now clear in her mind that what Blanche wanted most was her daddy and the closeness of her family. She was not a city girl. Madge was relieved to hear her say so, because her father had been wondering why they had her in the first place if she wasn’t at home where they could enjoy her, before she got married.
The days and nights Cora was unable to leave the house the world shrank to accommodate her. The farm was what she could see through the porch screen, or the curtains at the front window, the air rising in a shimmer of heat from the graveled road. In the cooling dusk her vision blurred at the pump shed, as if the wick of the lamp had been lowered. From a clump of foliage low on the trunk, dead barkless branches forked from a tree Emerson had planted. The tree was cutting back, as they were.
Although she was first up, Cora waited for Emerson to clear away the cobwebs blocking the door of the outbilly. When he sat down to breakfast they dangled like bits of veil from the rim of his straw hat. He smoked less, no longer able to keep the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe burning, nor did he complain, as he once did, of the weight at the pit of his stomach.
In October Emerson went with Avery to a cattle sale in O’Neill. It had been Cora’s impression Emerson had gone to buy a cow, but he returned with a team of plow horses, it being the noise of tractors, in Avery’s opinion, that cut down on the cows’ milk. So the two horses would work better as a team, Avery gelded the white stallion.
Several days later Cora heard a loud whacking noise near the barn. From the porch she saw Avery tugging at the bridle of the stationary white horse. Emerson stood at the rear, holding a board from the fence, which he whacked across the horse’s broad rump. The horse stood straddle-legged, as if watering, and looked swollen to Cora in his rear quarters. Neither the tugging on the bridle nor the whacking provoked him to move. Aloud Cora called, “What are you men up to?”
“He won’t eat,” Avery replied. “We got to exercise him.”
Emerson let up whacking the beast to stroke the flank where the harness had worn away the white hair. “Lookee here,” he said to the horse. “You ain’t even a white horse, you’re black.” He patted the rump he had just been whacking, chuckling to himself. This commingling of affection and cruelty bewildered Cora. An injury long forgotten, buried deep in her nature, reappeared as stabs of pain in the knuckles of her right hand. Emerson continued to whack the horse with the board while Avery tugged at the bridle. Flies rose in a cloud from his rump with each whack. Cora remained on the porch until both men had tired and left the creature to the swarm of flies, too weak to swish his tail. They retired to the shade of the pump house, where they drank buttermilk and discussed the problem. She could see Emerson when he thrust his head forward to spit. Her mind blank, a babble of voices filled Cora’s ears. She had been here on the porch in a pause in her ironing, and Sharon’s voice had carried as if spoken from a pulpit. Cora had been speechless, but Madge had said, “Mama, she don’t mean it the way you hear it.” It might have been last summer, it might have been this morning, Cora standing in the pickle-sharp draft off the kitchen, except that now she knew, as she hadn’t before, that Sharon Rose had meant it just as she had said it. It had not been a horse that bit her; she had bitten herself.
Such things concerned her but did not distress her. If Sharon Rose were to ask her, she would now tell her. Cora had not felt then, nor did she feel now, that she might have led a different life—only that this life might have been led differently. Things she had once put from her mind now returned for her to ponder. How could one avoid hearing, or saying, more than what one said?
The hedge on the east, the light glare to the south, the heat to the west, bounded her domain. The air wi
thin the house was like that in the cobhouse, now used by the hens to roost in. The clapboards on the west side of the house were like dead bark-peeled branches. Emerson had once painted as high as he could reach, but he couldn’t stand heights. He was now too old to do it from a ladder. He would say, “Come to think of it . . .” then forget what he thought. Otherwise he had mostly changed for the better. Rosalene and Blanche adored him. Cora might find him in the cobhouse, husking popcorn, or in the barn mending harness he no longer had use for. Over the winter he sat in her kitchen with his shoes off, his feet in the oven, comparing Montgomery Ward’s with Sears Roebuck’s prices. In the drought they needed water. They would drill a deeper well and pump it up. Ned would run pipes to Cora’s parched garden, where the sweet corn shriveled before it flowered. Buckets of the water she carried disappeared into the caked earth. According to Emerson, the drought was due to a cloudburst they had had in ’28. In the space of three hours the buckets left near the barn had filled with water and overflowed. The whole yard had looked like a lake. All that water had to come from somewhere, and it had come down in a single downpour. In his own mind he doubted it would ever rain again. The fault lay with a government that tinkered with farming, and ended wrecking the rain machinery. If in a long life he was sure of anything, he was sure of that.
When Ned and Madge had married, Cora’s garden had grown more than they could eat, or had the need to put up. Fruit ripened and rotted with no need to pick it. There was so much to eat Cora had simply forgotten the year they lived out of cans. Then it rained less, and blew more, with the only moisture where the snow melted. Along with the dryness the spells of heat might last several weeks, without cooling nights. A drying wind rattled the wind wheel, pumping just enough water for the two cows.
Once green as a park, with dew on it in the morning, Cora’s yard was the color of dried hay. The snow-flattened weeds near the barns were too matted to mow. In the evening fireflies rose from the fields of yellow grain like sparks. Buried in the yard somewhere were the croquet wickets, which always tripped Avery and his children. Only Cora seemed to see the mounds where the lost balls were buried. She meant to dig them up when it was warmer, but the stooping made her dizzy. If Madge brought the girls out to the farm they played cards for keeps on the screened-in porch. If the cards were taken away from Caroline she would play marbles for keeps with boys. She loved to win. If she couldn’t win, she would cheat. She would rather lose than just play for the fun of it.
Caroline was a pudgy, brown-skinned girl who made people think of Shirley Temple. In Cora’s opinion, the child was a show-off. A willful streak in her nature would lead her to do just the opposite of what was expected. Just as Madge had once sat and ogled Sharon, Blanche would sit and ogle Caroline. The seed of independence, the school principal had told Madge, was often dormant in some natures until it suddenly sprouted. In most other respects Blanche was the image of Cora, already taller than her mother and thin as a rake.
Was it that summer or the next one that the two men came out from the government, in Lincoln, to give advice to Emerson. They found him in the barn seated on the treadwheel, sharpening a scythe. Cora could hear its sharp rasp above their talk, as he let them wait. What did they want? They wanted to help him. They followed him to the house with their coats folded over their arms. They seemed friendly enough to Cora, asking her about her chickens, and her children. The older one had a son in the college at Lincoln. From the upstairs window opening out on the porch roof Emerson called to them to leave his farm. They replied that they had only come out to help him. Through the screen of the upper window Emerson fired his shotgun into the tree that shaded the porch. The men ran to where they had left their car, then drove through the hedge to get to the driveway. Cora felt that Emerson had acted too strongly, but she understood his feelings. It could never be so bad that accepting charity wouldn’t make it worse.
To Cora’s amazement, Madge found a spoon buried in the grounds in her coffeepot. She could not understand it. The coffee had tasted the same. It angered her to watch Madge make a wad of her dishtowel to wipe the bottoms of Cora’s clean cups. Why in the world did she? It proved to be dust, fine as talcum, visible when she drew a line on the oilcloth, or moved a plate. This dust puffed in a cloud when Cora shook out a curtain, or fussed with the doilies on a dresser. Emerson’s socked feet swept a shiny path between the bed and the hallway. Cora had not observed it until Fayrene pointed it out. Her own attention had been focused on the room off the kitchen, where the pattern had been worn off the linoleum. It proved to be too intricate to replace, but Cora brightened up the area with daubs of green and white paint. She went from there, having the paint, to daub white on the steps in the stairwell so they were visible in the dark. The iron frame of the bed, painted white, glowed in the dark like a presence. With the last brushful of the paint she touched up the hardware on the doors and the rusted metal handles of the stovepipe dampers. Emerson made no comment, knowing his way about without the need to look.
It seemed to Cora that he walked about in his sleep. She might see him in the yard, his big hands dangling, standing in the shadow cast by his hat, or moving slowly between the house and the barn with his head tilted forward, the sun on his neck. He had grown so spare his thighs no longer rubbed. It startled him when Cora, in her high shrill voice, called him to supper. He ate with his hat on, there no longer being a reason to take it off. Cats no longer followed him to the house after the milking, there being too little in the pail to slosh. Cora now let it set and skimmed off the cream, to spare herself the work of cleaning the separator. Avery brought them butter and cheese curds from the creamery. She had her chores. She never seemed to lack for something to do.
She heard the bang of Emerson’s hammer on one of the porch posts, but she did not hear him fall. Fearing ladders, he had climbed on a chair to mend a hole in the screen. His straw hat had fallen off, and he sat on the ground, wagging his head. With her help he got to his feet, but it made him dizzy to stand. He lay down on the cot and Cora sat with him, fanning off the flies. He made no complaint. Perhaps the swish of the fanning lulled him to nap. A gray beard darkened his sunken jowls; his lips were compressed to hold his chew in. Cora had had few occasions to study his face. The corners of his mouth and the tips of his mustache were the color of tobacco. Above the ridge left by his hat his forehead was dough-colored, without wrinkles. The fanning of the air stirred the wisps of hair about his ears. They looked huge to Cora, like the shells used to prop open doors. It shamed her to look at him with his eyes closed, feeling in her soul he was a stranger to her, and she to him. He had struck one of his fingers with the hammer and the blood oozed black around the blue nail. He seemed indifferent to the flies crawling on his hands.
This impression of Emerson would displace all others in Cora’s mind. He had never appeared young to her. It had been his easy assurance that impressed her. All of that now seemed part of a tranquil past unrelated to this present. The trip from Ohio, Emerson seated beside her, or going before her, walking the horses, now seemed a journey in the other direction. She was lulled by the creak of the harness; Emerson seemed short-legged in the tall grass. Over and over she saw him open his coin purse and spill the coins into the palm of his hand. Sorting the nails from the coins seemed to please him. Over and over she saw him wind his watch without checking the time. About this journey she had had no foreboding that it would conclude with a nightmare. Emerson still went before her, but they seemed to journey backward, into the past.
In Dr. Schirmer’s opinion, Emerson had suffered a stroke. This had caused him to fall from the chair and experience dizzy spells when Cora helped him. Over Cora’s objections, a Battle Creek woman stayed in the house for a week, bringing her knitting with her, and a radio. Cora slept in the bedroom upstairs, where she could hear the music through the floor ventilator. It seemed inexcusable she would play her radio while being paid to nurse. Cora walked about the house, her arms crossed at her front, or sat in the rocker
on the screened-in porch, her fingers touching her lips, her right elbow cupped in her left palm. If she peered in on Emerson, he looked peaceful.
The Battle Creek woman, Mrs. Berger, had lost her husband in the first war and her eldest son, Lincoln, in the second. Her daughter was married and living in Sioux City. She would rather be a visiting nurse than sit alone at home. Cora was not drawn to her, but stewed a chicken which she served with succotash and pickle relish. Without her radio the house seemed silent At night Cora would wander about with the smoking lamp, as if looking for something that was missing. The stale air of the house smelled of the mothballs found in the pockets of Emerson’s dress suit. After forty years of wear the knees bulged, but the coat looked new.
Like Orion, Emerson lived through the winter until it was March and the snow melted. He was so peaceful, Cora needed the assurance of Ned and Madge that he was dead. Blanche ran off and hid where neither Rosalene nor Caroline could find her. “Let her be,” said Madge. “She’s looking for him.” Emerson had never liked the Battle Creek pastor, but that was where both Orion and Belle were buried. Where the earth appeared to be sunken a space was reserved for Cora. In the shade of the trees the women sat in the cars, fanning the air with newspapers. The light glared; a chill wind blew into Cora’s face. But Madge remarked that Emerson would like it now that the trees were grown. There were neighbors at the service whose names Cora had forgotten, or never known. How strange the men looked to be standing in the open without their hats. They wore the solemnly blank expressions of young heifers lined up at a fence. She thought of Sharon, but she put from her mind what had been said.
Plains Song Page 14