“It’s the biggest book I could find.”
“Use one of those picture books,” said Callie, glancing up from her mending.
“All right.” Mathy carefully lifted her clover leaf and carried it to the bookcase, where the bottom shelf was filled with the Picture Index of Mythology and World Literature in twelve volumes. Matthew had bought it from a traveling salesman who, like all born salesmen, was part evangelist, part bully. Matthew simply hadn’t the courage to say no. To himself and to Callie he argued that the books would be educational for the girls. The girls found them quaint and uproarious.
Mathy pulled out Volume One and turned to some engraver’s version of Andromeda, fat and nude, chained to the rock. “I’ll put this on her like a fig leaf,” she said, and fixed the leaf strategically in place.
“Where did you find out about fig leaves?” said Callie.
“I don’t know.”
Callie glanced at Matthew with a shrug. They never knew what Mathy would pick up or where. She read a good deal. Sometimes she read the same book over and over. There was one called The Tree-Dwellers, which she found on the third-grade shelf, a story of a little boy in the time of the woolly mammoth. Mathy monopolized the book till at last the teacher spoke to Matthew about it. Shortly thereafter the book disappeared. Matthew found it one rainy morning in one of his rubber boots. Mathy was given a lecture on the Eighth Commandment and made to stay indoors all Sunday afternoon. She returned the book next morning and made her apology to the teacher. Within a few weeks, the entire text of The Tree-Dwellers appeared on the walls of her room. She had copied it in longhand, word for word, in her Big Chief tablet. Matthew spoke to her sternly, but the pages stayed on the wall. He had a feeling he had lost the round.
Mathy put the big picture book back on the shelf and climbed into Jessica’s lap, so that both of them were sitting on Matthew. “Papa, when we move to the farm, can I ride down on the furniture wagon?”
Matthew laughed. “You can if you may.”
“May I ride down on the furniture wagon?”
“We’ll have to ask Mama about that.”
“Mama, may I?” Mathy flung herself across Callie’s lap.
“Oh, my goodness!” Callie said, picking her off like a piece of lint. “You’ll fall off the wagon and break your neck.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll be careful.”
“I can’t let you ride down there like that—just you and them men that moves us.”
“Well, why can’t Jessica and Leonie ride on the wagon, too?”
Leonie turned around from the piano, where she was practicing her new piece. “I don’t want to ride on the wagon.”
“Why not?”
“It’s undignified.”
“I think it would be kinda fun,” Jessica said.
Callie said, “Oh, honey, you’re too big a girl to do things like that.”
“Why? What’s wrong with riding in a wagon?”
“It don’t seem ladylike.”
Jessica slid off Matthew’s lap. “I don’t want to be a lady. Ladies can’t have any fun.”
Leonie spoke up again. “Ladies don’t climb trees, if that’s what you mean. And they don’t hold a croquet mallet between their legs when they shoot, either!”
“It’s easier that way,” said Jessica. “I can’t hit the ball when I hold the mallet way over to one side.”
“Yes, and you spraddled out the other day, shooting between your legs, and tore the hem of your dress!”
“I know it. I already told Mama.”
Callie said placidly, “I don’t know why you can’t keep your clothes neat, like Leonie. Leonie, stop holdin’ your mouth like that. Makes you look prissy.”
Callie sighed to herself. In spite of her efforts, Jessica had not quite domesticated. She was a good girl, certainly. She did everything she was told, and she didn’t stop to argue with you as Leonie so often did. But there was just something about her that Callie couldn’t quite manage. Jessica was good help around the house; but she would rather dig potatoes than peel them, or clean the henhouse rather than the house. Leonie, for all her questioning and back talk (because Leonie always knew better than you did), practiced her piano lesson, finished her embroidery work, and had some dignity. But the minute you turned your back on Jessica, she was reading a story, or out in the barnloft with Mathy, sliding down the hay. And now she wanted to ride on the wagon, like a tomboy.
“Well,” Leonie said, “I’m going to ride down in the Ford—if we have to go.” She gave Matthew a black look, which escaped him, since he had gone back to grading papers. “You and Mathy just go ahead and ride on the wagon if you want to.”
“I haven’t said they could yet,” said Callie.
But when the time came, in mid-May, she relented. The dray-man said he didn’t mind, and he was one of the church members. It was decided that Mathy could ride on the wagon if Jessica went along.
“Now don’t fall off,” Callie cautioned, “and keep your dresses down. We’ll catch up with you before long. Mathy, here’s your sunbonnet.”
“I don’t want to wear it, Mama.”
“You put it on, now. You’re already burnt till you’re plumb black.”
“Oh, all right.” Mathy pulled the bonnet over her head and flung herself at her mother in a vehemence of farewell. “Goodbye, Mama darling!”
“Mercy, honey, be careful! You nearly knocked Mama down.”
Jessica stood by the wagon wistfully gazing up the street. She was praying that Marvin would appear, wild-eyed with grief, running to press a rose into her hand. For this she would endure the parental wrath. As there was no sign of him, she climbed in with a sigh. But once she was settled on the piano stool, and Mathy was ensconced in a dresser drawer, she began to giggle with excitement. As the wagon drove away, they screamed and clung to the sides and waved at Leonie till she was out of sight. Leonie rode down, ladylike, with her mother and father in the secondhand Ford, wearing her gloves and her second-best hat.
3
It had been five years since Callie lived on the farm. She was back in her element, airing the house, scrubbing woodwork, gardening and canning. And with no school to distract them, her daughters were all hers. How she reveled in their presence—agile, obedient little girls running in and out of the house, down to the garden, into the chicken yard, out to the hayloft, in from the orchard, down to the creek, in a very flurry of coming and going, with their hands full of berries and eggs and fish and flowers. Callie made the honey, but she needed her drones.
No less than the days she loved the evenings, when the family sat on the front porch and night sounds wove a soft web around them. Sometimes they only visited. Sometimes they sang, their voices spread sweetly on the darkness, Leonie’s soprano, Jessica’s soft alto, Mathy’s thin little husky tones, guided along by Matthew’s unobtrusive bass. He lay on his back those evenings, relaxed and jolly, with no studies to pull him away.
Sometimes when they rose to go in, they would find that Mathy had slipped off. Then they must light the lantern and go looking for her, down through the orchard, across to the Old Chimney Place. She was never far away. But these dark excursions troubled and perplexed them. Long ago the child had begun to wander in the night, unafraid, and not all their protests or punishments had cured her. As she grew older, and especially in town, she had seemed to outgrow the habit. But now that they were on the farm again, it recurred, compelling her into the dark. The nights seemed a world of her own, which she had found ready-made and waiting. They had the uneasy feeling that in that element she took on another shape, wore fur, or dissolved into mist. But they would find her, a solid familiar shape, merely walking about or perched in a tree fork, singing to herself. Then would come the lectures and the scoldings and repeated promises, before they could settle down again.
In spite of these occurrences, Callie found the summer complete. Sometimes it seemed to her that she could ask for nothing more than this—the long busy days and the warm
sweet nights, when the smell of honeysuckle filled the air and her husband sang on the porch with their daughters.
Early in the season, Matthew had planted a lettuce bed in the woods, on a spot where he had once burned a pile of brushwood. The soil, enriched by this pure compost, yielded an enormous crop. Callie sent the girls down every day or two to gather a salad. On an afternoon late in June, the three of them set out for the timber, Jessica carrying a market basket for the lettuce and Leonie a tin bucket, in case they found some ripe blackberries. All three of them wore their bonnets and half-hands, long cotton stockings with the feet cut out, pulled over their arms.
“I hate these things,” Jessica said.
“Why don’t you take them off?” said Leonie.
“Why don’t you?”
“I want my skin to stay pretty.”
“Oh pooh, you only wear ’em because Mama says to.”
Leonie tossed her head. “If I didn’t want to wear them, I wouldn’t.”
“Let’s ride Old Blossie,” said Mathy. Old Blossom, a Jersey cow as soft and fat and harmless as a sofa, raised her head and chewed at them.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to go to the timber,” said Jessica.
Mathy broke off a stalk of Queen Anne’s lace. “We can switch her on the butt.”
“Mathy! Where do you pick up words like that!”
“I don’t know. Saw, Blossie!” Mathy patted the cow’s fat yellow side and hopped onto her back. “Come on, there’s room for all of us.”
Jessica climbed up behind her. “Come on, Leonie, you can squeeze on behind me.”
“I don’t want to. It’s not ladylike to ride a cow.”
“Nobody sees us.”
“I don’t care, I’d rather walk.”
“Well, I guess Blossie would just as soon you did.” Jessica nudged the cow with her black-stockinged knees. “Come on, Bloss, let’s go to the timber!” The cow ambled down the path with a funny braiding motion of her feet. Jessica began to sing. “She’ll be comin’ around the mountain when she comes! She’ll be ridin’ on Old Blossie when she comes!” Mathy and Leonie joined in.
“Hold her tail,” said Jessica. “She keeps slapping me!”
Leonie caught hold of the tail and swung along behind, the berry bucket dangling from her elbow. They sang all the way to the lettuce bed.
As they were ready to start back, Leonie said, “As long as we’re this close, I’m going on to the creek and catch me a fish.”
Jessica rested the basket on Blossom’s back. “Now, Leonie,” she said in her gentle voice, “Mama said for us to come right back.”
“She said in half an hour. It hasn’t been near a half an hour yet.”
“I’ll bet it has.”
“I’ll bet it hasn’t. I’m going to catch a fish—it won’t take me a minute.”
“You didn’t bring a pole.”
Leonie took a coil of cord out of her apron pocket. “I’ve got a line and a hook. I can break me off a branch.”
“Well, all right,” Jessica said, “if you think we’ve got time. I guess Mama wouldn’t mind having a catfish for supper.”
They left the cow grazing in the shade and cut down past the willow slew, toward their favorite fishing hole. As they walked through the cornfield a freight train passed, a half mile beyond the creek, squeaking and laboring on its way to Renfro.
“See, I told you!” said Leonie. “There’s the Katy—it’s not three o’clock yet.”
“Not if it’s on time,” said Jessica. “It’s usually late.”
The faint cindery smell of train smoke blew through the corn-rows. “Who-oo?” said the whistle.
“Ooooh,” said Jessica, “doesn’t that sound lonesome!” The sound grew softer and softer, till it was lost in the rustle of cornstalks.
The creek bank was lined with thick underbrush, sumac and berry briars. The girls were about to push their way through when Mathy, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped. “What’s that?” They stood still and listened. From the creek came the sound of a man’s voice singing. “Is that Papa?”
“Papa’s cutting hay on the Old Chimney Place,” said Jessica.
They listened again. It was a sweet contented sound, but no doubt about it, it came from a man. They turned to each other, big-eyed. Here it was at last! Danger! All their lives Callie had cautioned them, “If you ever see a strange man in the timber, don’t wait! You get to the house as fast as you can git, and stay together!”
“Run!” whispered Jessica.
Mathy stepped forward into the brush, Leonie right behind her.
“I want to see!” said Leonie.
“Come back!”
“Sh!”
The singing continued, thin and lonely and contented. Mathy crept in behind a clump of sumac. Carefully, making not a sound, she pushed aside the leaves. “There!” she whispered.
Leonie and Jessica peered over her shoulders. Below them, at the edge of the water, a young man lay stretched out on a flat rock in a patch of sunlight. He was completely naked. He lay on his back, one knee in the air and his hands behind his head, singing away to the treetops.
“In London town where I did dwell,
There lived a boy, I loved him well.
He courted me, my life away,
And then he would not with me stay.”
He rolled over and stood up, planting his feet wide apart on the rock as he stretched his arms. The Elders leching for Susanna were no more enthralled than the three girls hiding in the bushes. Here was a man standing before them plain. They stared at his naked body with unblushing curiosity.
“Is he a gypsy?” whispered Mathy. Callie had warned them against gypsies as long as they remembered.
The young man stretched again, scratched his chest, and plunged into the water. He ducked under and out and somersaulted. His wet buttocks glistened briefly as he went over. After a moment he moved to a shallower spot and began to scrub his arms vigorously with his hands. He threw water over himself, like an elephant, and shook his wet hair and made gargling noises. The girls began to giggle. They pressed their hands tight over their mouths and turned red with laughter.
“He’s funny!” Mathy whispered.
“He’s all hairy!” said Leonie.
The man waded to the opposite bank, where his clothes lay, and pulled himself out. They watched him rub himself dry with his hands and a big red handkerchief.
“Let’s throw a rock and run!” said Mathy.
“Oh no!” Jessica whispered frantically. “He might chase us.”
She was too late. Mathy had already heaved a rock toward the creek. It landed in the water with a loud chunk! The young man jerked his head up, and the girls saw no more. They charged out of the brush like big game and ran through the cornfield as fast as they could go.
“Don’t stop here!” Jessica panted as they came out on the other side. “He might follow us!” They scurried up the slope, into the woods to the lettuce bed.
“Blossie will protect us!” cried Mathy, throwing her arms around the cow’s neck. “Good Old Blossie!”
“Do you think he’s a white-slaver?” said Leonie, panting for breath.
“Oooh, I didn’t think of that!” Jessica turned pale. “I don’t think he is, though. They’re mostly in cities and all dressed up, Mama says. Anyway, he looked too young.”
“Was he a gypsy?” Mathy said.
“Of course not,” Leonie said impatiently.
“How do you know?”
“He was too white. Except where he was sunburnt. And his hair wasn’t black.”
“It sure was awful curly,” Jessica said.
“He’s probably some hobo off of a freight train.”
“He didn’t look like a hobo to me,” Mathy said. “I thought he was cute.”
“Oh, Mathy! He was all hairy,” said Leonie.
“His face wasn’t. He was pretty.”
“Men aren’t pretty,” Leonie explained. “They’re handsome. Only this o
ne wasn’t. He looked common.”
“Not to me.”
“Well, he did to me.”
Mathy turned to Jessica. “Did you think he looked common?”
“I couldn’t tell. We weren’t close enough.”
“We were close enough to see that thing between his—”
“All right, Mathy, you hush, now. I declare!” Jessica turned bright red.
“I meant if we were close enough to see that, we were close enough to tell whether he looked common.”
“I don’t remember what he looks like. I wouldn’t know him if I met him in the middle of the road.” Jessica giggled. “I wouldn’t know him from Adam!” She and Leonie shrieked with laughter. “I’d just die if I ever saw him again!”
“Me too!”
“Are we going to tell Mama?” Mathy asked. Leonie and Jessica suddenly stopped laughing. “Are we, Jessica? Going to tell Mama about the man?”
“Well, I guess we don’t really have to.”
“Why not?” said Leonie. She held her mouth prissy and put her chin in the air. “I think she ought to know.”
“Why?”
“She just ought to, that’s all.”
“I don’t think we ought to mention it.”
“Well, why not, Jessica?”
“I don’t know, it’s just that—well, I don’t know!”
“If we tell her,” Mathy said, looking sideways at Leonie, “she’ll want to know why we went to the creek.”
“That’s right,” said Jessica, “maybe she won’t let us go fishing any more.”
Leonie’s chin came down. “Well…maybe so.” She picked up her empty berry bucket. “Let’s not say anything. I won’t if you won’t.”
“All right,” Jessica agreed.
“It would only make Mama nervous.”
“That’s right. No sense doing that. We better get back, though. She’ll come down here looking for us.”
Mathy climbed onto Blossom’s back. “All aboard!”
“I think I’ll walk,” said Jessica.
“Giddyap, Blossie!” The cow swayed off along the path, Leonie holding the tail.
Jessica walked behind them slowly, swinging her sunbonnet against the weeds. It was a funny feeling, having seen a man with no clothes on. If Papa knew—! She shuddered. But it wasn’t as if she knew the man; it wasn’t like seeing Papa. Or Marvin. She suddenly tried to imagine Marvin with no clothes on and blushed at the thought. She only liked to think of Marvin in his Sunday suit, looking grown-up and important. She closed her eyes and felt again that hasty kiss by the water cooler. Oh, she wished they were back in town, where she could see him!
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