And she would shake her head and explain that old Ansel’s car was broken down and that he rode his mule, and most likely wouldn’t be in till past sundown. They were usually stricken silent, and would stand for a moment in the lane, uncertain of what to do, but always more slowly and often wearily, they would go on to Mrs. Hull’s house or the post-office porch. Some, hungry for talk like Mamie, continued to stand by the fence, but Gertie had worked her way almost across the little field, and the distance made conversations brief. Even Sue Annie could talk only a little after being stopped dead in her tracks by news of the lateness of the mail. “An here I am,” she cried across the field, “tuckered clean out frum a washen, rushed through dinner, an a hurryen up th hill—when I ought to ha been a butcheren my fattenen hawg. An by tomorrer mornen most like it’ll be warm agin an a rainen, an Nellie Sexton a haven her baby.”
“Th wind’s set in frum th north,” Gertie called back.
“But that won’t hold back Nellie’s baby,” Sue Annie cried, turning with a suspicious sniff toward the north. She tried to call out some opinion on the weather, but between the quick walk up the hill and her calling conversation even she was too breathless to speak loud enough for Gertie to understand. Yet, some minutes later, when Gertie had dug to the end of the row next to the post office, Sue Annie, all her wind come back, was carrying on about Clovis. What if Uncle Ansel’s grist mill broke down and they had to eat boughten meal? The government owed them at least one man who could fix anything and never got drunk.
Gertie turned to the next row, glancing half hopefully, half fearfully, down the lane as she did so. It was too early for Old John, she told herself. He was no weak woman to come rushing for the mail before his day’s work was done. Still, she looked again before she was hardly to the middle of the row, but saw only Ann Liz Cramer, Claude Cramer’s wife, with the younger half of her family, come from across the Big South Fork. The woman waved to her; Gertie waved, then listened to Ann Liz’s laughing account of the wild time they’d had on the high swift river in a little skiff overloaded with themselves and the eggs and molasses they had brought to sell.
The Cramers, her mother said, were getting rich out of the war. None of the boys or Claude had enough book learning to go to the fighting, but Claude and the four older children, one of them a girl, had factory jobs in Muncie and batched while Ann Liz and the younger ones farmed. Now, there was hardly a mail but what brought a package of some finery or house plunder for Ann Liz.
She thought on Ann Liz and her farming as she reached the far end of the row where far below her a narrow band of shadow like a black line on the blue lake of the river told her more than a clock of the turning down of the day. Standing there looking out across the world, the war with all it brought and all it took away seemed somewhere else, not near enough to shorten her breath and chill her hands as when she listened to Mamie or sat in Mrs. Hull’s crowded house. She had only to look up the creek from the shadow on the river to a place hidden in a fold of the hills, and all the twisting troubles would leave her. Sorrow there was for Henley dead and worry for Clovis gone, but even these could not take away the wonder of the thing waiting for her as the Promised Land had waited for the Israelites—the Tipton Place. Maybe in only a few minutes now it would be her own.
The shadows crossed the river, touched the willows and the red birch on the other side, then strode steadily up the westward hillside. One by one the white houses seemed to slip under a thin blue cloak of smoke that thickened on the river, though high above, the wooded hills stood warm-looking and faintly pink in the low red sun. Black coal smoke rose from the post-office chimney, and from inside there came the cries and jabbers of little youngens with snatches of talk from the women, still-sounding and scattered, like the talk of women in church before services begin. Even the older children were touched by the waiting. More than one would stop, the way her own acted now that their daddy was gone, be suddenly still in its work or play, head lifted, listening. Its face for an instant would be like the faces of the old women or the young ones with babies on their arms who came every moment or so to stand on the porch and look up the lane and listen.
There was still sunlight enough to make shadows on the high ridges when Old John came, walking slowly and stiffly. Gertie looked at him, eager yet afraid. Though people said he’d bought it just as a favor to Silas Tipton, who needed the money to move his family; what if he didn’t want to sell the place? She waited, calling to him with her eyes, but he never raised his head. He walked on down the lane with his eyes on the ground, but not like a man studying the ground. His shoulders and his bent stringy neck bespoke a man so old and tired he looked at the ground because it was the easiest thing to do.
He looked so old, she sighed as she turned back to the digging. He had four sons and three sons-in-law scattered over all the world in the fighting, and even his children not in the war were scattered. The spading fork handle was sweaty under her hands. She studied him as he turned up the post-office steps; he looked like he was in a selling humor. Her father always said he would never have sold his timber if he hadn’t had a bad spell of rheumatism and no child left to help him.
She realized that while she had been gaping after John, her peace and silence had been destroyed. All the Hull children, helped it seemed by everybody else waiting for the mail, had come into the potato patch loaded with all the Hull tubs, baskets, buckets, and old gunny sacks to gather the potatoes. She saw with some sorrow that Aunt Kate and Cassie were among them. She started to scold the old woman for wearing herself out with a useless trip to the post office when she could have taken the mail and got Cassie, but instead Aunt Kate scolded her for having done such a deal of digging.
“Law, Aunt Kate,” she said, lifting her head, smiling, flinging back her hair. She realized Old John was looking at her, and that in his eyes, dimming and bluing up with age, there was something of the warmth and gladness that had used to be his when he looked at a timbered hillside he had watched grow from saplings to tall timber. “Gertie, you’re about th best tater-diggen hand I’ve ever seen,” he said. The warmness in his eyes widened, spread until his hollowed, gray-whiskered cheeks wrinkled with smiles.
“Why, I bet I ain’t a bit better’n Mary was at my age, an she ain’t hardly half my size,” Gertie said.
He glanced around to make certain no one noticed, took a long reflective rolling chew on his quid, then spat with careful precision at a little sandrock. He stepped nearer, glanced quickly around again, then said in a voice hoarse with his attempt at whispering, “Gertie, they’s a little piece a business me an you ought to go into right away.”
She gripped the spading-fork handle, leaned on it heavily, and looked hard at the potatoes she had just dug. Her insides were all a tremble, like some colt of a boy who has just begged a girl into the bushes but won’t let on how tickled to death he is and wants to make her think it’s all her doing. She moved to the next hill, pushed the spading fork down, and got herself in hand. “You mean you’re a wanten me to move an kind a shamed tu say so. You needn’t be. That place ain’t fitten fer nothen. I’ll have to feed mighty close to make th little corn I’ve raised run me till picken time, an you know I ain’t hardly got no stock atall to feed.”
“Now, Gertie, you know I ain’t a tryen tu make you move. I’ve allus said you was one a th best renters I ever had.” He spat again and looked at her sideways from the corners of his eyes, smiling a little. “But if me an you could do a little traden, your renten days ud be over.”
She dropped the weight of her hand onto the spading-fork handle and wondered that he could not hear the jumping of her heart. “Law, Law, Uncle John, what th old preacher says is th truth, ‘To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’ Right now don’t seem like th time to talk about renten. Didn’t you know they’d got Clovis an I’m all tore up?”
John spat with a gesture of disgust. “Now, Gertie, I know Clovis is gone an you’re his wedded wife
, an you feel bad an miss him.” He glanced around again, made a still greater effort to whisper. “But you ain’t no Mamie Childers lost on a little farm ’thout a man. Now, I don’t mean a word a harm—an I like Clovis an I hoped they’d leave him. He’s got a good turn, an when it comes to tinkeren they ain’t nothen on earth he cain’t fix. But jist between you an me—an I mean no harm—when he was home he warn’t worth a continental to you in th crop maken. His coal haulen wasn’t regular, an his tinkeren didn’t bring in much. He loved it too well—he’d tear down some feller’s old car an set it up agin an mebbe never git paid.”
Gertie smiled at him. “Them army wages comes in mighty steady. I won’t be a haven to pray fer rain on some pore piece a corn on a sandy ridge top fit fer nothen but scrub pine. Why, I’m a thinken about renten Lister Tucker’s house right by th road an never a botheren with no crops. It’ll be handy to th school an th mail.”
Old John smiled. He knew she was lying. “Now, Gertie, you know you couldn’t do thout maken a little crop a some kind. An as fer bein handy to th school, why everbody knows that schoolhouse’ull set there cold an empty till th war’s over.” He smiled again and patted her shoulder. “I recken you was a thinken a renten Lister’s place while you was a goen over th old Tipton Place—I seen yer whittlen sign where you’d set by th spring an tried to figger how you’d git it frum me fer haf its price, a knowen I never wanted it in th first place.”
Gertie, completely mistress of herself now, tossed back her head and smiled, then bent to another potato hill, speaking careless-like to the spading-fork handle. “Law, Uncle John, I hadn’t hardly thought a thing about it. A woman’s got no business traden round without her man. But how much’ull you give me to take it off yer hands?”
He smiled at her as she straightened for the next hill. “Many’s th time, Gertie, I’ve wished you could ha been one a my own. You’re mighty nigh as good a hand at farmen as I am, an if I don’t watch out you’ll git th better a me in this trade.” He looked at her a moment in silence, his head twisting upward a little, for she was taller than he. “Do you know why I’m a doen this, Gertie, offeren you land fer th same price I paid fer it—somethen I ain’t never done? Fifty years ago I bought cut-over timberland fer fifty cents a acre, but I sold it fer more. Some uv it I’ve still got growed up in timber.” He remembered the sold timber, the cut trees, and he was for an instant an old man unable to steady his wandering mind.
He looked away toward the hills, then back to Gertie. “It’s fer yer ole pop. I seed him t’other day.” He hesitated, looking at her, and Gertie, no longer able to act uninterested, nodded as he went on. “I ain’t a tryen tu meddle in yer business, but yer pop told me about th money they give you—enough he thought to buy th place, he said. He’d give his good leg to know you could allus be close by him—close enough that he could come set in your house sometimes.”
He cleared his throat, and spoke carefully, as if his words were unsteady feet on slippery ice. “Yer pop ain’t had a easy life. It’s like Sue Annie says—Henley was his boy, too, his onliest boy. So that place is yours, Gertie, fer what I paid—five hundred. Whatever you want to give me down; th rest on time with interest—half a cent less’n th bank, five an a half.”
Gertie nodded, but it was a moment before she could speak, and then her voice came choking and halting: “I can pay it—all, Uncle John. All these yers—” She thought she was going to cry. She stood a long time bent over a potato hill, unable to see the spading fork, the undug potatoes forgotten. It couldn’t be true. So many times she’d thought of that other woman, and now she was that woman: “She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her own hands she planteth a vineyard.” A whole vineyard she didn’t need, only six vines maybe. So much to plant her own vines, set her own trees, and know that come thirty years from now she’d gather fruit from the trees and grapes from the vines. She hardly heard old John as he talked on about the price of land. He didn’t think land would ever get any cheaper. She was paying about eight dollars an acre with that good log house thrown in. Some would say that was high, the old ones remembering fifty cents an acre for cut-over land, but now there were more people but no more land. …
She realized he had grown silent, and looked up. She saw that he stood with one hand behind his ear, listening toward the road. She looked about and saw that the women and children, who a moment ago had been talking, all were stilled; even Sue Annie was like a frozen woman.
Gertie thought for an instant of a game the children played where on a signal everybody had to stop and hold himself exactly as he was. But hound dogs never played games, and now they stood, heads lifted, listening like cur dogs. She heard it then, the sound faint on some high spot on the ridge road far away. A strange car was coming in, not the grocery truck but a car. The only cars that came brought news.
It seemed like something was choking her. She stood, the spading fork gripped in both hands. She wanted to go on with her work, dig another hill, but could not. Maybe it was some coal truck the government had left by mistake out hunting a load of coal. Unless a man were lost or hurt or killed in the war, they didn’t make a special trip to bring the news. She tried to reason, but ice-cold hands, stronger than any human hands could be, were squeezing her chest and back, pushing on her throat.
It wasn’t her turn. Clovis had been gone only ten days. Her turn had come with Henley. It wouldn’t come back. Turn by turn, she told herself. Still she listened, with her whole body, as the others listened, heads lifted, nostrils faintly flared for the thin wind. It was nothing, not a thing; they’d all been scared by a wandering airplane. Then Matthew, Samuel’s oldest boy at home, and twelve years old, who stood by the fence, called to the older and those further down the field, “It’s a car—a good-runnen car that don’t make hardly no noise—a comen thisaway.”
Old John’s faded eyes searched the faces of those nearest him. He understood from them what was happening, though he had heard nothing. He straightened his shoulders, spat out his quid, buttoned his jumper, then stood, shoulders braced, hands hanging empty by his sides, and waited like an innocent man standing up to be sentenced in court.
Gertie looked at him and remembered his four sons in the fighting; from him her glance went to Aunt Kate, who had been kneeling, emptying the potatoes the children brought in buckets and baskets into a tub. The old woman knelt with an unemptied bucket clutched in her hand, her head lifted, her eyes fixed on the road. In her ashy face, the eyes were wide and bright, straining, fighting to know. They made Gertie think of Cassie’s eyes when Cassie tried to read and could not. Her hands would be clammy cold like Cassie’s. Of which boy was she thinking? It was enough to know the news cars brought was never good.
Gertie plunged the spading fork into the ground and went and took the old woman by the arm. “Let’s me an you go back to th store,” she said, and pulled her to her feet. Aunt Kate’s weight, dragging on her hand, seemed hardly more than that of Cassie, but her steps were uneven and springless. She was old, older than the old ought ever to have to be, old like her own father, and John and Clovis’s father, and all the other old ones with their young in the war.
Gertie led her to the store porch where Mrs. Hull stood, looking down the lane as she rocked Mamie’s baby in her arms. Mrs. Hull’s ears were dead to the child’s crying, a weary frightened weeping as if some of its mother’s long terror had entered into it before its borning.
Gertie put Kate on one of the benches in front of the store stove. Mamie’s baby hushed its crying, and in the silence Gertie heard the car. It was round the bend by the schoolhouse, following the gravel clean to the end, plainly hunting someone. She sat for an instant by old Kate, and though their bodies did not touch she could feel the old woman’s quivering through the bench. She got up. She wished she were back in the potato patch, digging hard and alone, able to look out toward the hills. “My help cometh from the hills.”
She wanted to begin at the beginning and say it all to Kate, bu
t when she looked at her she could not. The old woman’s unnaturally bright and somehow pleading eyes were fixed on the stove, holding to it as if the stove, and not the bench she gripped with a hand on either side a knee, held her up. “Couldn’t I git you a drink er somethin, Aunt Kate?” she asked at last.
Kate shook her head with a slow quavering, but would not look away from the stove, “It ain’t turned off no place, has it?”
“Not yit.”
Old Sugar Bell, wandering in with other hounds and young children, came sniffing out Kate and laid his head in her lap. He looked up at her, and the old woman seemed to take comfort from his touch, and began to smooth his forehead as if he were a troubled child. Gertie left them so, looking at each other, and went to stand on the porch with the rest of the company gathering there.
The sound of the car came steadily now. In a moment Gertie saw the flash of metal in the low sun as the car came through a place in the ridge road where the pines were thin. Even Sue Annie and the frightened baby continued silent, listening, watching, waiting. All were like people huddled together in a wild storm, looking out, looking up, wondering what next the wind will take or the lightning strike.
Old Lucy Anderson, with her five sons gone and her husband away with the mail, stood stiff and still on the top porch step like a wooden woman. Old John, his hat in his hand, his thin shoulder blades like folded wings under his buttoned-up jumper as he tried to stand straight with lifted head, waited on the bottom step in front of the women to take the message the car brought. He would talk to the strangers in the strange car, not because he was John Ballew, the richest man, the largest landholder in the voting precinct of three school districts, but because he was the man, the only man, among the company of women and children.
The car came out of the pines and down the road between Samuel’s fenced fields. Sue Annie whispered, “It’s th same one brung word a Henley an Jesse.”
The Dollmaker Page 13