by Ralph Moody
While I was speaking, the weight of Grandfather’s arm eased on mine. He drew the sag out of his shoulders, and his head lifted till his whiskers stood away from his chest. When I’d finished he was facing me. His hands reached out for the muscles in my arms. As his fingers closed tighter and tighter, he looked up into my face, and said, “I ain’t too old, Ralphie! I ain’t too old! There’s still power left in them old hands! The way you’ve skun the stones off’n the high field, I don’t cal’late there’s nothing we couldn’t do betwixt us. Come on! Let’s get at them chores! We’re a-going to walk the field today; there’s a thousand things I got to show you, boy.”
25
Grandfather Sets His Cap for ’Bijah
GRANDFATHER had never helped me with the chores, but Monday morning he was at the barn when I came downstairs at sunrise. He must have been up since four o’clock. A skillet of baked beans was simmering on the back of the stove, the oven door was open, and a plate of johnnycake and one of Annie’s pies were warming on the top shelf.
He was pitching hay down from the mow when I went to the barn, and he peeked over the edge like a squirrel looking down from a tree. “Got the hogs all slopped,” he called out to me. “By gorry, Ralphie, we’ll get an early start at it this morning. We ain’t going to stop for nothing till the rocks is all off the high field. By fire, ’twixt the two of us, we’ll make ’em fly! We’ll show ’em what kind of logs makes wide shingles! Provender the hosses, and we’ll eat our victuals afore you do the milking.”
As I fed the horses, Grandfather came down the ladder, and hurried away to the house. He still had his hat on, had set the table, and was dishing out beans when I got there. “By gorry, them ain’t bad looking beans,” he called to me as I was washing. “Pie looks uncommon good, too. Strawb’ries in it, ain’t there, Ralphie?”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. “I think Annie is a pretty good cook, don’t you? She taught me how to make biscuits and johnnycake.”
“Wastin’! Wastin’!” Grandfather snapped. Then, as he drew his chair up to the table, he said, “Well, what’s done is done. No sense a-wastin’ the victuals now they’re cooked. Fetch a couple of them little cupcakes, Ralphie. Goes awful nice with hot tea.”
Grandfather ate more for breakfast than he had for any meal since Millie left. He seemed to enjoy every mouthful, but when I tried to swing the talk around to Annie’s coming again, he snapped, “Eat your victuals, Ralphie! Time flies, and we got a tarnal heap of work to do afore the snow flies.”
All during milking, Grandfather kept coming into the tie-up and telling me that time flew. I always saved the brindle cow till the last. She still kicked as much as ever and, if anything, the milk sprayed worse. Grandfather watched me fight the milk from her for a few minutes, and said, “Leave be! Leave be, Ralphie! There ain’t no time for fiddle-faddling.”
“If I do, her bag will cake, and it will ruin her,” I told him.
“Ruin her! Cal’late she’s tarnal nigh ruined for a milker a’ready. Let me see . . . Who be there I might trade her off to?” Grandfather walked up and down the length of the tie-up three or four times, just pulling the end of his whiskers and looking at the floor. Suddenly, he sang out, “By fire, I got him! I got him, Ralphie! ’Bijah Swale! Don’t know a man I’d sooner trade her off to.”
“I know him,” I said. “I rode up from Lisbon Falls with him the first day I came here.”
Grandfather stopped walking, and looked at me closely, “Don’t cal’late he said nothing good of me,” he said.
“Well, I don’t remember just what he did say.”
“Wager you ’twa’n’t good. ’Bijah, he ain’t told the truth yet if a lie would do. Meanest man this side the Androscoggin River.
“Cheat a widow woman out of her last hen! Skun me out of four cords of wood. By fire, Ralphie, I cal’late to set my cap for ’Bijah. Hmmm, hmmm. There’s an auction over Pajepscot way this afternoon. ’Bijah, he don’t buy nothing, but he don’t never miss an auction. Goes for the free victuals. Gorry sakes! If we wa’n’t so all-fired busy, I’d go set the wheels a-rolling to get him het up for a trade.”
“I don’t see any reason for your not going to the auction,” I told him. “By eleven o’clock, you and Old Nell could rake all the stones the yella colt and I could haul in a day. I’d be awfully glad if we could get rid of the brindle.”
“Gorry sakes! Cal’late maybe I best! Cal’late maybe I best!” Grandfather sang out. “I’ll drive the cows to pasture whilst you set the milk and fetch the hosses to the high field.”
If stone hauling had been fun when I was working alone, it was ten times as much fun with Grandfather along. He handled Old Nell as if she’d been a team of oxen, and anyone could have heard him a mile away. She couldn’t take six steps without his hollering, “Gee off! Haw to! Gitap! Whoa back! Whoa, you tarnal fool hoss!”
The yella colt knew every move of stone hauling as well as I, so I had no use for the reins, and kept them tied on the hame knobs. When I was forking or lifting stones onto the drag, he’d move forward a step or two at my cluck, or stop at a hiss. Because I always gave him a piece of apple after every pull on the dumping tackle, there was nothing for me to do but to switch his singletree over to the tote-rope hook and let him go. He’d swing around for a straight pull, throw his weight into the collar, then, when he heard the stones roll, come back to the drag for his apple.
I’d noticed that Grandfather stopped shouting at Old Nell each time the yella colt and I took a load of stones to the wall. On about the sixth trip, I looked up and saw him watching us. “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie!” he called out. “You got the old hoss to reading your mind. How in thunderation does he know what to do without neither voice nor line? By fire! Never thought to tell you! The colt, he won’t work single! Never would! Never do nothing but balk and rare!”
If Grandfather had told me that a month before, it would have made me awfully mad. The first thing that came into my head was his making me use the colt on the tote rope that day in haying when I’d broken the ridgepole in the barn. Even though I wasn’t mad, I wanted Grandfather to know that I knew, so I called back, “He does all right now. I’ll bet we could even use him on the tote rope for the horsefork.”
“Like as not! Like as not!” Grandfather snapped quickly; then, “Gitap! Gitap, Nell!”
By the time he’d made another trip across the field and back, Grandfather’s voice was pleasant again. “By gorry, Ralphie,” he called, “mark how the rocks is coming a-tumbling out back of this little harrow! Come the Sabbath, I cal’late we’ll have this field skun clean as a whistle. Gorry sakes! Won’t have nothing left to do but the dressing afore we tackle the wilderness field.”
The mailman had come and gone before Grandfather would stop raking stones and go to the auction. I didn’t expect him home until after dark and, all afternoon, kept planning the things I’d say to Annie when she came for her cows. I couldn’t tell her what Grandfather had said about not letting her come to the house again, and I wouldn’t tell her he’d said I couldn’t see her any more. When the sun was dropping behind the pines on the ridge, I went down to the valley and waited for her. I just told her that Grandfather expected Millie home in a few days and wanted to save the butter making for her. Then I said we had enough pie and cake to last that long, that it was the best I’d ever tasted, and that I’d come down to see her again the first chance I had.
Grandfather came home that night while I was milking. I didn’t know he was there until he’d unharnessed Old Nell, and came into the tie-up shouting, “I got him, Ralphie! I got him! Old ’Bijah riz up for the bait like a horned pout for a night crawler.”
All the while I was milking, he gloated over the trade he was planning to make with Mr. Swale, and followed me from cow to cow, telling me stories of dozens of different trades he’d made. “Ain’t no two ways about it, Ralphie,” he told me as I stripped the brindle, “a farmer ain’t a farmer less’n he’s a good trader. There’s traders and
traders, but there’s tarnal few good ones. Father, he was one of the best. Wouldn’t no more lie to you in a trade than he’d steal off’n you, but you could put what meaning you might on what he said, and you was lucky if you come away with your boots on. What I know of trading, I learnt from Father. Don’t cheat ary man in a trade, Ralphie. If it comes about that he wants to cheat hisself, I don’t cal’late that’s none of your affairs. Don’t never be anxious, and don’t never hurry a trade. Good trades has to be sot up afore the dickering commences. Take ’Bijah Swale now. The hook’s in old ’Bijah so deep there ain’t no chance of his spitting it out. Cal’late we’ll be seeing something of ’Bijah afore sundown tomorrow. If chance should happen I and you ain’t together, you come a-running whenst he heaves in sight. Your old grampa’ll learn you how to make a powerful good trade, Ralphie.”
Along in the middle of the next afternoon, Grandfather and I had stopped to rest the horses. The stones had been cleared from more than three-quarters of the field, and Grandfather called to me, “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie! Getting tarnal nigh the end of it, ain’t we? S’posing I and you cast about a bit and cal’late what best we might do with this old field.” I was sure he was going to say something about strawberries, and wanted to throw my arms up and shout, but I didn’t. I lifted one more stone onto the drag, and then walked over to him slowly as if I was just going for a drink of water.
We’d walked a little way, quartering across the top of the hill, when Grandfather knelt and scooped up a handful of dirt. “Just about petered out, ain’t it?” he said, as it sifted through his fingers. “Your old grampa ain’t kept stock enough these last ten years to feed the soil proper. Mark how yella and spindling the nigh side the crown is? Needs a power more of dressing to fetch it back. T’other slope’s browner; you take note? Don’t need quite so much. Yonder, ’twixt the orchard wall and the pasture bars, you mark that black streak? ’Twon’t need next to none.”
I nodded my head, because I couldn’t trust my voice not to sound too happy if I spoke.
“Cal’late you could ration out thirty loads more dressing, nice and even, ’cording to the color of the soil?”
I was so excited that I started to speak before I’d thought what I was going to say. “I could if . . . ”
Grandfather looked up at me with a half smile, and said, “Could you if you had a . . . Mark! Mark, Ralphie!”
There was a ring of metal against stone, then the chuckle of a loose wagon hub on a spindle, and I looked around to see a gray horse’s head come above the hill at the top of the orchard.
“It’s somebody with a gray horse,” I told Grandfather.
“Cal’lated ’twould be,” he said, and went on sifting dirt.
He didn’t look up or move from his knees, and I didn’t want to be staring, so I kept watching the sifting dirt. In a minute or two, a man called, “Howdy, Tom. How be you?”
Grandfather looked around, but didn’t get up. “Tol’able, ’Bijah. Tol’able,” he said, and reached for another handful of dirt.
I glanced over my shoulder to be sure it was the man who had given me a ride the day I came. It was, and he was driving the same horse, hitched to the same blue dumpcart. Tied by her horns to the back of it, was a long-legged, slab-sided, red cow. Her head was twisted sideways, and she was pulling back on the rope.
“Just a-driving by, and stopped in to pass the time o’day with you.” Mr. Swale shouted.
“Nice one, ain’t it?” Grandfather said, and let the dirt trickle through his fingers.
Mr. Swale waited a minute or two, and then called back, “Mite early for fall plowing, ain’t it, Tom?”
Grandfather nodded his head.
“See you got a boy to help you. Your daughter Mary’s boy, ain’t it?”
Grandfather nodded again.
Mr. Swale waited two or three minutes that time, and shouted, “One boy can be a big help to a man; two ain’t worth shucks. Learning him to pick rock? Cal’lating on sowing back to timothy?”
That time, Grandfather said, “Mmmhmm,” as he nodded.
My heart jumped quickly. And then I felt empty inside. When I looked up from the ground, the red cow was twisting her neck and pulling back on the rope. “So, boss, so.” Mr. Swale said, just loud enough I could barely hear him, then shouted, “Hear you got a new bull, Tom.”
“All-fired good one,” Grandfather said that time, and stood up. “Gorry, ’Bijah! See you fetched a cow.”
“Heifer,” Mr. Swale shouted back. “Milking Shorthorn. Close to purebred.”
“Bull’s Holstein. All-fired big one,” Grandfather told him, as he started toward the dumpcart.
I felt so bad about his planning to plant timothy hay again that I wanted to be alone, so I turned toward the wall where I’d left the yella colt. I’d only taken two steps when Grandfather said, in a real low voice, “Let be, Ralphie! Come watch the fun.”
“What you a-standing him at, Tom?” Mr. Swale shouted before Grandfather was through speaking to me.
“Fifty cents,” Grandfather called, and reached down for another handful of dirt. As I bent with him, he said into his whiskers, “Cow ain’t in. He’s here for trading.”
“Trifle steep, ain’t you, Tom? Eb Kennedy hain’t asking but thutty-five for his Jersey.”
“Ain’t far up to Eben’s,” Grandfather said, as he walked on toward the dumpcart.
I’d seen plenty of Shorthorn cattle in Colorado, but I’d never seen one that looked like Mr. Swale’s cow. Her horns turned in like a Jersey’s, and her head was nearly as wide at the muzzle as it was at her eyes. Her neck was scrawny, and she kept twisting it as she pulled at the rope. Mr. Swale noticed Grandfather looking at the cow, and said, “Heifer’s a leetle timid. Hain’t used to being drug on a rope. Mighty gentle spirited critter.”
Grandfather walked around the cow with his hands folded behind his back. “Breechy, ain’t she?” he asked, as she slatted around to keep an eye on him.
“Lord sakes, no! Hain’t a breechy bone in her hide. Timid, Tom! Timid! ’N awful good milking heifer. Wouldn’t swap her off for the world if my pasture wa’n’t so nigh the county road. Them automobiles a-passing worries the jeeslin’ out’n her. Throws her off her feed.”
“Dite ganted, ain’t she?” Grandfather asked, as he looked at the deep hollows under her hip bones.
Mr. Swale climbed down off the dumpcart and started to walk around the cow, too. “Yes, siree, Tom. Ganted out. Pore critter; them automo. . . . Heavens to B . . .!”
It happened so fast that I hardly saw it. Mr. Swale was right beside the cow’s hip when he said, “Pore critter,” and she kicked as he reached a hand out toward her. Her hoof flashed through the air like a stone from a slingshot, and there was a click as it hit his leg just below the knee. He caught himself quickly, but there was a hurt sound in his voice when he went on: “. . . etsy wouldn’t have a pore critter scairt so. Needs a big quiet pasture, the like of yourn, Tom.”
As Mr. Swale limped back and climbed onto the dumpcart, Grandfather winked at me across the old cow’s back. “Trifling little bag,” he said. “Cal’late she’s tarnal nigh dried up, Ralphie.”
“No, siree, Tom!” Mr. Swale said, as he sat rubbing his leg. “No, siree! My missus, she’s been a-feeling porely; rheumatiz in her hands. Didn’t get her milking done this morning till nigh onto noon. You can count on a steady ten, ’leven quarts to a milking. ’N awful good butter cow.”
“Got a good butter cow,” was all Grandfather said.
“Pasture like your’n, Tom, you’d have this here heifer up to fifteen, sixteen quarts to a milking inside a fortnight.”
“Ain’t cal’lating to overcrowd the pasture. Ralphie, I and you’d better get back to them rocks.”
Mr. Swale started to turn his cart, and he let Grandfather and me go fifty or sixty feet before he stopped and called, “Might give a dollar to boot on a swap, Tom. Shorely do hate to put this timid heifer back in that county road pasture. It’s again
my conscience.”
“I don’t think she’s a heifer,” I whispered to Grandfather.
“Older’n I be,” he mumbled into his whiskers. Then he turned and called out, “Always willing to talk a fair trade. What kind of a critter you looking for, ’Bijah?”
“Hain’t partial to getting ’nother heifer, Tom,” Mr. Swale said. “Something easy milking, account of the old woman’s stiff hands.”
“By Gorry, ’Bijah,” Grandfather said, as he walked back to the cart, “cal’late I got just what you’re looking for, but she’d cost you more to boot than you can afford.”
“Who told you what I can afford?” Mr. Swale asked angrily.
“Gorry sakes alive, ’Bijah,” Grandfather said, “all I was a-getting at . . . This cow of your’n’s farrow, you say. I’d have to feed her through the winter afore she freshened, and I was a-cal’lating on swaping you a spanking fresh one. Couldn’t make no dicker less’n eight, ten dollars boot.”
“Easy milking?” Mr. Swale asked.
Grandfather looked over at me, and asked, “What would you say, Ralphie; could a stiff-handed woman milk that spotted cow?”
I didn’t want to see the spotted cow traded off. She was the best milker in the herd, but I had to say, “Sure. Anybody could milk her.”
“Kick?” Mr. Swale asked me.
“No, sir,” I said. “She’s never raised a foot when I’ve been around her.”
“Might be we could deal, Tom,” he said. “It’s agin my conscience a-putting this timid heifer back in that cussed pasture of mine. Where’s your cow at?”
“Fetch ’em in to the barn, Ralphie,” Grandfather told me; “I’ll look after the hosses. No need a-fetching Clara Belle and the brindle.” And then his eyelid flickered just a trifle.
It was early, and the cows were way down at the back end of the pasture. I didn’t hurry much going down there, and the more I thought about it, the less I could be sure that Grandfather’s eyelid had flickered on purpose. Myra and the spotted cow were the first ones I found, but I didn’t take them right in. I still hoped there might be a chance of getting rid of the brindle, and Grandfather hadn’t said I couldn’t bring her. I decided to start them all into the lane, then get in front of the brindle and Clara Belle, and let them follow along by themselves.