The Fields

by Conrad Richter

  “Yer pap’s a dyin’,” Cora said sharply when they reached her.

  She took Jeanie and Dave took Jep.

  “You kin come in, too, Resolve,” Cora said. “He ain’t seen you since you come back.”

  There was no getting out of it this time. Resolve had to follow through the kitchen where Granny’s rocker was empty now, and into the suffocating room where it smelled of sweat and the strong hairy scent of a chained bear or painter. The others crowded back to make room. An off-the-floor bed with four hand-whittled walnut posts stood in the corner and in that bed lay back a gaunt hairy wreck of a man. Could that be Judah MacWhirter? His bed shirt was torn to rags. The hair on his face, head and chest that Resolve remembered iron gray and black was white now and streaked with blobs of “yaller” lather. His eyes were closed like his vitals had been sapped, but he couldn’t lie entirely down, for his hands and feet were fastened to the four bed posts by leather thongs.

  “Judah!” Ellen said, a crying as she poked him.

  “Hunh?” he grunted at her, his eyes only half open so you could see nothing but the whites.

  “Don’t you want to look on your youngest before you pass on?” she begged him.

  Something came back in that worn-out face. His neck stiffened and his head came forward so that the jaw fell open. His burned-out eyes peered from under the dark roof of those socket caverns till they made out his youngest two children in that swimming candlelit room. Dave had lifted up Jeanie in his arms, and Resolve stood next to Jep at the foot of the bed.

  The dying man’s voice came distinctly.

  “The blessings of the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob rest upon you, my childer and my godson!” he said like when he used to pray at the sawmill church on Sabbaths the circuit rider was away.

  Then the light went out of his face, but Resolve thought he still saw it around him in that dim log room.

  “It’s criminal not to let him die in peace,” Portius declared in his deep voice. “Cut him down! I’ll assume the responsibility.”

  Resolve was sure his pappy had never looked so weary as when by daylight they tramped the trace home.

  “Won’t Jep and Jeanie get anything now?” the boy asked him.

  “Nonsense!” his father said. “The law makes as fair and just a settlement of a man’s estate as any lawyer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SWEAT MILL

  GUERDON wished he had him another mammy. Oh, he liked his mam good enough, but she’d changed. She’d gone back on him. He couldn’t make her out any more.

  First she stood a slab bench with a gourd of soft soap by the run, and all had to scrub their heads and hands like they were pewter plates. Then she hung up a haw comb, and every time before you came in to eat, you had to hackle your hair with it. Oh, she was bound you’d be somebody around here. She put these puncheons down in the cabin just so she’d had a floor to scour, he believed. Now she talked of getting lime from Maytown and making her boys whitewash the logs.

  Her ways were so “cam” you figured she was easy-going, but that’s where she fooled you. The day wasn’t long enough for the things she studied up to do to keep body and soul together and to get you along in the world. She was having a loom built and said she knew where she could get her hands on two more ewes. She wouldn’t let Resolve go back to the Covenhovens any more save on day work. It was poor business binding out your oldest boy, she said, when you had more work than you could do around home.

  Just to show you how she was, last night it rained. The ground was soft and givey this May morning. Nobody could work in it. Guerdon had got up early and filled a gourd with night crawlers, but do you reckon his mam would let him and Kinzie go fishing? No, fishing was all right, she said, and she would be glad for catfish to fry for supper, but Guerdon was too far back in his work. He had let the meal sack get plumb empty. Now he and Kinzie could stay home today and grind corn, for she had to go out to Mary Harbison who was mighty poorly.

  “Kain’t Resolve grind it?” Guerdon cried.

  “Will Beagle’s coming to help Resolve on the bench loom.”

  “He could grind till Will comes.”

  “He has other work to do,” his mother answered him. “You kin wash your hands before you start.”

  “That’s all I do, wash and comb!” Guerdon complained.

  “Well, I don’t want mud and worm tails in the meal,” she said.

  “You’d make me wash if I had to tote sheep dung!” he cried and dodged as if from her hand.

  “The Indians say,” Portius offered judicially, “rich soil grows tall weeds.”

  “Yes, and if I let you have your way, you’d be no better than the Injuns yourself,” she came back at him. “Except, you take an interest in politics.”

  “I was just going to say,” he mentioned, “that when enterprising men fetch labor-saving machinery into the wilderness, I think we should encourage and patronize them.”

  “I’m for keepin’ up to the times when we kin afford it,” Sayward said.

  “The miller charges only a tenth.”

  “Some say it’s nearer an eighth,” Sayward told him. “They say he takes it once out of the grain and then again out of the meal. We kain’t spare a quarter of our corn to a miller. Sooner’n that, we better pay those we’re behind with and grind it ourselves.”

  Portius turned on his boy a slow, half-admiring, half-defeated look. The look said, That’s your mother, son. We better not say more. She’ll argue down any lawyer. He took some papers from his shellbark box and put them in his green satchel. If anybody wanted him, they could find him at Colonel Suydam’s.

  Before he went, little Salomy Harbison came. She said her mam was so weak she almost gave up and died last night. Sayward listened, strong and “cam.” The more she heard how her good friend lay out there at the point of dying, the steadier she got. It would make an ailing person feel better just to see her. You could tell here was somebody that wasn’t scared. Just the way she stood there and asked the right questions showed she was a master hand at sickness. She knew good as a doctor what teas to brew and what poultices to lay on suffering flesh. When she spoke, her voice that had been hard a minute before was cheerful now.

  “You run home and tell your mam I’ll be right along,” she said. She didn’t come right out with it, but she as much as promised the sick would be on the gaining side once she got there.

  Yes, Guerdon told himself bitterly, his mam could purr like a house cat to Salomy Harbison. She could put herself out to tramp all the way up there and stay nursing the whole day and maybe half the night. But she would keep her own flesh and blood from going fishing and make him mill corn instead. He went out to the run, but he didn’t do any scrubbing. He watched a gray squirrel hanging head down on a branch of the leaning elm. You could hardly believe a squirrel could hang that way on the ends of the twigs where a bird couldn’t. He threw rocks at the squirrel. His mammy must have clean forgot about him. He could hear the thwack of Resolve trying out the loom. Then he heard his name called, and by the time he wet his hands and got to the door, she was ready to go, taking Sooth with her.

  Guerdon went in the cabin slow as a coon on a chain and twice as unwilling. After the bright light and fresh smells outside, it was dark and stale in here with soot smells from the chimney. He hated cabin work worse than sitting in meeting. He could eat as much meal as the next, but grinding it was the curse of this world.

  Resolve said he ought to be glad he didn’t have to scrape it. Scraping was the slowest. You rubbed ears on a grater punched from the bottom of some old copper kettle. Plenty skin and blood from your fingers went into scraped meal. Especially in the springtime when corn was hard as stone. Some said they would a good deal rather have a hominy block. A corn cracker, they called it. Such took an old fire-hollowed stump for a mortar and a log for a pestle. If they hitched a sugar sapling to it, they called it a sweep. You could hear a sweep a long ways through the woods, and some families talked back
and forward with theirs. A woman would just pound hers a few times and wait. If her neighbor way off yonder answered, she knew she was all right. If not, she would send somebody over.

  Guerdon hated a sweep as bad as a grater. But what he held in the blackest abomination was their own sweat mill that stood in the chimney corner. It was the devil’s own contraption and turned around hard as a four-horse wagon. A day’s grinding seemed a month long, and no Sabbaths. The handle raised water blisters. The stones scraped and kept sticking. Those two millstones weren’t more than a foot and a half across, but they could grind his body and soul between bed and runner. By the time he got through, he felt like he had been bulled into samp, rough and lifeless as the meal that came through. That meal had to be hand-sifted in three sizes. The finest his mam could make bread out of. The coarsest she had to boil all day over the fire to soften for human guts. Will Beagle had fixed a pole on the mill. The bottom of the pole caught in a hole in the runner stone, and the top went through a clapboard pegged to the joist. Two could turn at the same time. But Kinzie was too small to throw in much muscle.

  Today he just fooled and held back till Guerdon tired of it.

  “If you kain’t turn, you don’t need to ride!” he lashed out at him.

  Resolve, who always took Kinzie’s part, looked up from the half-finished loom.

  “I’ll help when Kin’s tired.”

  “He ain’t a goin’ to git tired,” Guerdon said, stopping the mill short. “That’s all, Kin. Don’t feed any more.”

  His younger brother looked up blinking.

  “You said that’s all?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Resolve got up and came over.

  “What are you goin’ to do?”

  “I got no time to tell you,” Guerdon said. “But I kin tell you what I don’t aim to do. I don’t aim to do what the river’ll do for me.”

  Resolve stood considering.

  “What do you expect Mam will do to you?”

  “She won’t know nothin’ about it unless you blab. We’ll be home before she gits back.”

  “How’ll you get the corn over and back?”

  “Oh, we’ll git it ’ar. Won’t we, Kin?”

  His younger brother nodded vigorously, but he kept his eye on Guerdon. It was plain he didn’t know too much about this as yet.

  “Come on,” Guerdon told him. “I heerd Star’s bell when I was out at the run.”

  They found the two-year-old heifer cropping the tender young wild rye and pea grass that came up by itself in the bottoms. She was tame but contrary as the Old Harry. They had to drag, beat and push her up to the door.

  “Keep a good holt on her,” Guerdon told Kinzie and started for the cabin, but he had to jump back and grab a tail or she would have got away. “Resolve, you could drag out that sack for me!”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Resolve said, standing there cool as could be.

  “You don’t keer!” Guerdon cried at him. “Will you hold Star for me then?”

  “Not me. I’m not gettin’ in this.”

  “You’re a watchin’, ain’t you?”

  “You can’t get licked for watching.”

  Kinzie had to feed the heifer corn out of the sack before Guerdon could get free to drag the sack out. Then he and Kinzie worked and grunted it up on the young cow’s back. There they roped it, and Guerdon tied a piece of the tow rope to one horn for a line.

  “G’long, ox!” he called triumphantly, slapping the line on her back.

  But Star never stirred. Now that she was here, she’d stay. She wanted more corn. Guerdon had to make a drag rope out of the line before she’d budge. That was the hardest work he reckoned he ever put in dragging that fool cow off from home. Grinding the corn would have been easier, but never would he give in before the others now. He took out his feelings bawling at her. He called her names that made little Libby put her fingers in her ears and Huldah’s green eyes snap. He dragged and swore while Kinzie came on behind beating and hollering.

  That’s the way they went. The heifer would give in and go a few steps. Then she’d put her front hooves together and make a stand against the world. They had to coax her with leaves and wild rye. Seemed like they’d gone halfways to the English Lakes when she sniffed the wind and went on her own self. She must have smelled the mill from way down here. Guerdon just let the rope drag. Star stayed to the trace good as a horse. He and Kinzie had nothing to do now but walk after.

  This, Guerdon told himself, was the seemliest day he ever saw. He didn’t need to do a tap. He could loaf on his feet and look around. The baby leaves of the white oaks were soft and curling, the green of the other trees tender fine and new against the black of rain-soaked limbs and butts. Birdsfoot violets were out, purple and velvet. Snake doctors flew. Young ferns curled out of the forest mould like fiddle tops. In the run, shiners were swimming, and crawdads and helgamites crawled under the stones. They were going to have fine weather, for the cock of the woods flew around screeching. And all the little bitty birds were saying, “Swee-eet Canader, Canader, Canader,” a calling out the place above the English Lakes where they went to nest. He felt sorry for Resolve back there a slaving at his loom. He’d be slaving back there himself if he hadn’t had the get-up to get out.

  They came around the last turn in the trace, and there was the race. It was “yaller” as a sovereign with river water. The new mill stood alongside, its logs still bright from the axe. It had a top storey and a log sticking out to hoist up sacks by rope. Three horses stood tied to trees in front. A pile of fat sacks lay by the mill door.

  “Looks like we kain’t get waited on right off,” Kinzie said.

  “It won’t take long once he gits to us,” Guerdon promised. “Them big mill stones don’t dally. They churn a couple times and the grist’s done.”

  “I couldn’t lift one o’ them big millstones, could I, Guerdie?”

  “You couldn’t budge one with a handspike. But the water wheel kin.”

  “The water wheel kin turn those big millstones mighty easy, kain’t it, Guerdie?”

  “Don’t take it long,” Guerdon promised. “Nor us either once we git a goin’. You won’t have to club Star goin’ back. Just point her snoot toward home, and she’ll light out so we kin hardly keep up.”

  “They’ll be s’prised to see us — how soon we git back,” Kinzie nodded.

  They fetched Star up to the mill door to unload. The men inside came out to laugh at the sack on the cow’s back.

  “Don’t know as I can take you on, boys,” the miller said.

  Guerdon stood there stubborn.

  “I kain’t take the corn back.”

  “It might take all day till I get to you.”

  “We kin wait,” Guerdon said.

  “Your mam’s not settin’ up with the johnny board waitin’ for you?”

  “No, sir,” Guerdon said.

  “She don’t have to milk the cow for your mush and milk?”

  “That heifer don’t milk yet.”

  “Then it’s all right.” The miller winked at the men.

  They tied up Star by the horses. When the men went back in the mill, Guerdon and Kinzie went after. Hadn’t they a right? Didn’t they fetch grist to the mill? They picked out one end of the miller’s bench, and there they sat quiet and big-eared while those men gabbed and swapped stories. The bench they sat on shook gently. The planking floor rumbled under their feet, and the soft, gray miller’s dust came like a skift of fine dry snow. It settled over everything, over the planks and sills, the men’s hats and shoulders and the miller’s cat lying at a cubby hole looking for rough-tailed mice.

  It was a master place to hear a story.

  “I tell you about the woman that ran the mills in the Buffalo Valley?” Michael Topping asked. He had hunched himself down till he looked as if his hat set on his shoulders. “This was back in Pennsylvany. She was good as a man at the trade. She had a grist mill and sawmill. Then she put in a hemp mill and
borin’ mill. She bored a good many gun barrels airly in the Revolution. Well, the Injuns come down the Suskyhanna and burned her mills. Burned her clean out, and a fine home she had, too, with dormer winders lookin’ out of the third storey. The army needed more flour and rifle barrels and she built everything up again. Borin’ mill, grist mill, hemp mill and sawmill. House, too. Took all she had, and all she could borry. Then he couldn’t pay, and they put her out. Another man took over the mills and moved in her fine house. She had damage money comin’ from the government. Thirteen times she went to Philadelphy and tried to git it. She had no money for coach fare and had to walk. A hundred and fifty mile she walked each way. She was an old woman by that time and the war was over. They didn’t keer about her mills any more. Of course, I never seed her. That was before my time. But I seed the stranger who came askin’ where she was buried. I was a boy and took him up in the church yard. He stood a while lookin’ down at her grave. It had no marker. The ground was sunk in and nobody had filled it. I seed water run down his cheeks. He told me he was her son, and they’d have the mills today yet if justice had been done her.”

  Guerdon looked through the mill’s window. The leaves looked gray and dusty outside. He could see that miller woman in his mind. He could see her walking all that far piece to Philadelphy. She was just like his own mammy. She wanted all that was due her. He could see her grave with the ground sunk in. It gave him a funny feeling. Why, he knew that man! Yes, that man standing there looking down a thinking of his mammy could be himself fifty years from now.

  “We had a blind miller back in York state,” said a man Guerdon didn’t know. The story-teller propped his feet up on a post so he could tell it better. “That miller couldn’t tell a blue-spotted ear from a red one, but he could mill good as anybody. Never gave a pound short. Had a chair with an old red cushion in his mill room. Had a lounge, too, but never laid down even at night time. Something closed in his windpipe. He claimed it came from living over the race, but some reckoned it was the mill dust. When nobody was there, he’d run the mill just the same. He’d sit by himself and listen. If anything went wrong, he could tell where it was and go to it up the steps and over the shafts and belts. Day time or night time. He didn’t need any candle. Well, one time a black man came in to steal meal. He came in the middle of the night. The mill door was never locked and he sneaked right in. He went to the toll bin and helped himself. He’d spread his sack and scooped some in when he heard the blind miller talking. ‘Well, Sam,’ he said, ‘your sack’s half full. I reckon you got enough now.’ Sam dropped his sack and ran. Next morning when some came with grist they found Sam’s sack in the toll bin. It was half full like the blind miller said. That’s what raised the hair on the black man. He couldn’t make out how the miller knowed him and how much he took in the dark. They said he moved out of the country and never came back.”