In the Fall

by Jeffrey Lent

  Connie came forward and sat, picking up one of the dried rings and chewing like worrying over it. “But God, he’s a well-made man.”

  Leah smiled at her. And said, “You’re holding back.”

  “Well, for now!”

  Leah nodded. “He’s young.”

  “Some things, it seems to me age don’t matter on a man.”

  “He strikes me as steady-minded.”

  “Any boy can mind his manners waiting on dessert.”

  “Is that what he’s after you think?”

  “By Christ I wish I knew. He talks a serious streak and so do I and then we’re all over each other and it’s Katy-bar-the-door. What I like about him is he’s got big ideas but not too big. It all sounds right and fits with who he is but I still get antsy. Like jumping out my skin. Other times we’re just having a grand old time and I don’t think about a thing. I don’t know what to trust: him, me, the both of us.”

  “Sounds like your Mister Jack Manchester man gave you something more than what you recognized.”

  Connie looked at her, one side of her lower lip pulled up between her teeth. Paused, thinking. Then made a small nod. “Thing is, how do you know?”

  Without pause Leah said, “When you can’t help yourself. When it’s all beyond you. When thinking just doesn’t even happen.”

  “Sounds like ten times a night.”

  “Then maybe it is. Or maybe not. One these days you’re going sit across from me and bold as brass tell me what your future looks like. Could be him, could be not him. Could be somebody else. Could be tomorrow. I don’t know and you neither. Hard as it is, that’s how it should be. It keeps things, interesting.”

  Connie nodded. “Things’re interesting enough I guess.”

  “Now that’s good. All you can ask for.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Stupid.”

  “Not hardly. But that don’t mean you get advance notice.”

  “I worry I’m not around as much as you need. Both you and Norman. I made a promise to him and doing that, one to you too.”

  “You’re round enough just now. Time comes we both know you’ll be around more. Norman worries about the sugaring and I worry about this.” Patted her stomach like a guest arriving. “Time you’re shirking you’ll know it. Who knows, maybe that Glen’ll even come in handy.”

  Connie burst breath through her nose. “That’d be a fine day.” Then said, “How’d you ever trust Norman?”

  “I don’t know. But, the time I met him, I knew I had to trust or not. It didn’t mean I didn’t leave my doors open. It just meant I wasn’t going to use em less I had no choice.”

  Connie nodded, her face lowered toward the table. After a bit she said, “All I want is to climb up all over him. All the time.”

  Leah was finished cutting the apples. She needed to pee. She needed to all the time now. Both hands on the table she pushed up and stood, Connie now watching her. Leah rocked and steadied herself and said, “Your bread’s ruined.” She went to the entry way and pulled on a shawl and overcoat, wrapping herself easy for the outhouse. She looked back and Connie was watching her. Leah said, “Of course you feel that way.”

  Connie stood from the table and said, “I punch that loaf down and let it rise again it’ll be fine. Won’t hurt it a bit for patience.”

  Leah nodded. Turned for the latch into the woodshed and without looking back said, “Bread’s not all will rise you wait a little.”

  They’d been sugaring day and night a week, the sap daytimes seeming to pour from the trees so both Connie and Norman hiked in the woods with the yokes, the snow shrinking each day so the trails became quickly packed enough to walk without snowshoes. The south side of each tree spread a small stage of bared brown leaves outward. They brought up the second older and smaller gathering tank and placed it on a scaffold beside the sugarhouse to empty the gathering tank into so when dusk fell and the wind dropped and temperatures fell they had two tanks’ worth of sap to boil off. One of them would take the team and sledge down to do evening chores and eat supper while the other fired the kettle and began boiling. The first would climb back after dark with a cake tin of supper wrapped in towels.

  The two would work into the morning hours, stoking the fire to keep a low rolling boil, skimming off the surface with a paddle and then plunging the paddle in a downward twisting turn to keep the thickening sap even. When it would froth too high they’d drag a lump of lard on a long string through to settle it. A long-handled dipper would pour forth a thin apron when it was syrup, a thicker sheet when it was ready to sugar. As a kettle finished they worked fast to pour it off into the long sugar molds. Then the kettle was refilled and the fire pokered up and there would be a brief time before the fresh sap came to a boil. Norman had a demijohn of cider and would pour out a couple of drams into the sugar dipper and sip at it until it was gone, Connie taking it once or twice for small swallows. Both too tired to talk. Norman would go outside and look out over the starred valley of the farm, his back to the sugarhouse. Then return to the work, the short chimney sending up a straight white plume while steam from the kettle broke out under all sides of the roof. They would finish by half past two or three and be back up in the woods by eleven the next morning. The soft spring air itself invigorant to the work.

  The night the ice went out it was Connie came down for the evening feed-up and to eat with Leah and carry supper back up to Norman. Leah moving slowly around the kitchen now, cooking one-pot meals that would carry well and furnish the long nights. Connie was famished with work and mopped up two plates of pot roast with carrots, parsnips, onions and potatoes, the vegetables all showing wear from the long storage, while Leah across from her ate slowly and with tired method, as if the food were no more than sprite fuel atop an already filled stomach. Before she went off up the hill again with Norman’s food Connie stopped while wrapping the cake tin and stepped forward and said, “You look peaked. You feeling right?”

  Leah shook her head. “I’m wore out. Wore out is all. Nothing’s comfortable anymore. Everything’s a job of work.”

  Connie touched a hand to her brow. Held it there and lifted it off and touched her again. “I guess for a hot kitchen you feel all right. It’s much to ask, you working down here for all of us.”

  Leah shook her head again. “Cooking’s all. I haven’t lifted a broom or dustrag since I don’t know when. I’m fine. Nothing like what you two are up doing. You forget, I’ve done it years past. I know. All I am is a fat tired woman gonna have a baby. Poor little old me.”

  Connie grinned at her. Leah went on. “Go on. Get food up to that man ‘fore he drinks too hard at that cider.”

  With Connie gone Leah washed up, using hot water from the new tank on the firebox side of the range. Then swept the kitchen and filled the stoves, here and in the parlor and the one in the front hall, the ceiling of which was punctured four times along its length with cast-iron round registers to let the heat upstairs. Then back to the kitchen and the luxury of warm water to wash herself and finally up the stairs in the dark, undressing and pulling the soft washed flannel nightdress down over herself and letting herself slowly down into the bed on her back. The second-story windows free of frost for the first time in months.

  She was not sleeping when the ice began to boom. Perhaps she’d slept some earlier; she could never tell. Then she was lying in the bed and hearing it. The ice over the river a mile away in the valley, grown thick through the winter, began to come apart in great torn shreds the size of boxcars and barndoors, softened from the top by the warming days and strained from underneath by the feed of snowmelt from the hill brooks. It was a sound unlike any other. She imagined it to be like a very slow train wreck that went on for hours. Or maybe some bent memory Norman might hold from a great distance of artillery fire. She’d never seen it go out but had seen the remains the day after: the blocks and chunks and sheets all jumbled along the shorelines, caught up in stacks like hu
ge spilt cards in riverbends or where the bank had caved, leaving a three- or four-tree clump half into the water for the ice to layer up behind. The central channel open and thick brown, roiling white on top with current, paddies and cakes of ice sailing along with tree limbs and other trash. So she lay in bed listening to the air-softened destruction of winter and seeing the aftermath of it in her mind, seeing also the slowed low river of summer spilling over the ledges and boulders of pools and shallows and then felt without pain or cramp or other warning the soft warm flow between her legs and reached down and knew what it was even as she lifted it to her lips to taste.

  She rose in the dark and made her way downstairs to the kitchen where a single lamp was lit, hiked her nightdress and reached again and checked her fingers. Like admonishment her first and index finger were coated with blood. She stood what seemed a long time looking at it. And deflated said aloud, “Oh God damn it.” Then went out through the entry way woodshed with the meager stack and took up a length of split wood and continued outside. Barefoot into the caked hardened mud of the yard to the weathered silver post where the dinner bell hung—the bell never once rung since she’d arrived, some thing left over from other days—and began to beat the side of the bell with the stovewood. At first just a low hollow tone and then the clapper broke free of the rust seal and at counterpoint to the stovewood struck the side of the bell. So there was the hard low metal thrang followed by the crisper tone of the ring. Beating it like beating herself.

  Up the hill they’d just poured off into the molds and refilled the kettle with new sap and were awaiting the boil, standing outside listening to the ice going out. The night was still and Norman was pulling it in with small gasps, tasting for the turn of the wind to the south and the warm air to follow, not finding it but sure it would not be far off. The warm air would end the sugaring. They passed a dipper of cider. They both heard the sound at the same time and both said nothing but strained to clarify it from the percussions of tearing ice. They spoke at the same time.

  “That’s a bell,” Connie said.

  “Is that a fire?” Norman scanning the skyline ridges and blank depth of darkened valley beyond the farm. Saw nothing save for the faint light and rising steam and smoke from distant sugarhouses on the far ridge. Then again, both at once.

  “That’s our bell, that’s our bell.” The tones now clear, sharp rising from the farm.

  “Oh my Christ.” And Norman threw down the dipper and began to run, his boots sliding in the mud of the track, going then off the side into the snow, his arms pin wheeling for balance as he went. Connie stood a moment, watching; then the full implications of the bell came over her also. She started after him, then turned back, running to the sugarhouse to throw open the firepit door in the brick arch and, leaving it open, took up the old spade and ran in and out after shovel loads of snow, casting it on top of the freshened fire until she was satisfied the fire would die. She could hear Norman crying out for Leah. Connie blew out the lantern and left it there, running after her brother in the dark.

  She fell twice going down and in the farmyard found her brother already with Tommy out, the harness thrown up over his back unbuckled and Norman trying to fasten harness at the same time he mounted the shafts of the high-wheeled cart into the fittings. She was breathless, panting, sore up her back and right arm with her clothes soaked through. She went forward and settled the hames to the collar and tightened them closed and stepped around her brother to lean and catch the bellyband and buckle that. He saw her as he tightened the trace chains and his voice choked. “She’s bleeding. I got her back up to lie down.” He pulled the looped lines free of the hame ball and stepped up into the cart, still speaking. “I’m going after Doctor. Go set with her.” He settled into the seat and gathered the lines and took up the whip from its socket and said, “Keep her quiet if you can. It’s not even a month early. She’ll be fine. I’ll get Hurdle up here and she’ll be fine. Get up, you bastard!” and laid the whip across Tommy’s back and they went out of the yard and down toward the lip of the bowl in the dark, the thick wheels sucking at the mud, the hooves pulling up smart with the slog, the cart lurching as it went through the mired ruts and pools that once were a road.

  Connie went quick to the house thinking Mud like this it’s an hour to the village, time to rouse the doctor if he be home, then an hour back if he don’t kill the horse, and went into the kitchen and stopped, frightened. Her breath still ragged from it all. The house was very still. She stood in the kitchen trying to get her breath back, scrubbing her hands under the gravity line. Opened the draft of the stove and set the copper boiler atop the range and filled it with water. Filled the reservoir also. Then pulled the tea kettle forward, lifting up a range plate so the kettle was over the open flame of the firebox. Set out cups and saucers and teapot on a tray and stuffed the strainer with mint and dropped it into the pot. Spooned in fresh sugar made just the day before. Checked the kettle and saw she had time and ran down cellar to the small cask of applejack and popped the bung to pour out a scant half cup. The applejack made from freezing a barrel of hard cider and then siphoning off the small unfrozen core of alcohol. Ran back upstairs and poured the applejack into the teapot and then filled it all with water, the kettle singing now. Replaced the stove lid and lifted the tray and went down the hall and up the stairs, the camphorate odor of mint, maple and apple rising into her nose as she went. Her clothes still wet, clotted with mud, sticking to her.

  She went along the upstairs hall. The bedroom door was open, light like orange rind coning onto the hall runner. She was terrified. The youngest child, she’d never seen a newborn. Certain it would come with Norman gone and the doctor not there. Such a small child, so early. She had only vague ideas of what to do. Her wet clothing chilled her, as if death walked with her. She paused before the door, out of sight. She could see the foot of the bed, the slender tent of Leah’s feet. She dreaded what lay above them. The feet were spread apart. It was very quiet, no moans or the cries she’d expected. The tray an awful weight in her hands. The muscles in her forearms ached, holding it.

  From the room, Leah’s voice. “That you, Connie?”

  “I’m coming,” she called, her voice scraped, oddly gay.

  “Get in here quick. I need you girl.”

  Connie went in with the tray. Leah was propped high on pillows, her face composed, calm, set. Connie set down the tray and poured out tea into the two cups, talking all the while. “I threw this in the pot coming up here. That mint tea you like, fortified up a tad. Norman’s already gone for Doctor so you just rest easy there, he’ll be back in no time, you’ll see, and everything’ll be just fine. Here take this, you look good, you look fine, are you all right?”

  Leah took the saucer in both hands and brought it up to breathe in the tea, then set the saucer on the nightstand. She smiled at Connie. “I’m all right. I guess I’m going to have this baby. I don’t know. I’m bleeding a little. It mostly stopped. Nothing else has happened, not yet. Look at you. You’re a mess.”

  “We came running, both of us.”

  “Well. I was scared.” Took up the cup, blew and sipped. Wrapped her hands around the cup and rested it against her covered belly. “I’m still scared but not so bad. I need you to do something you’re not going to want to do but you have to anyway. For me you have to.”

  Connie drank from her tea. Immediately regretted the applejack over the cider she’d already had. With no idea what was coming. Swallowed a little more and set the cup down. Leah raised her cup and sipped again and looked at Connie, waiting. Connie said, “What’s this thing I’m not going to want to do?”

  Leah grinned and said, “You’re just like a little bull calf sometimes. Put your chin down against your throat looking like you’re ready to dig in your feet.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I want you to go up and get Marthe Ballou for me.”

  “Oh no. I won’t do that.”

  “Yes you will.”


  “No I won’t. I promised Norman I’d set with you. He’s getting the doctor and you’re going to be just fine.”

  Leah sat silent. Leaned back against the pillows. As if running something long and complicated through her mind all over again, to render it down to the simple flat statements needed. Connie saw all this and felt something waver inside herself, some weakness she’d never before guessed at, or named, or done more than dismissed before. And rose up against it still silent, all the while feeling the rally as something false, something not true to herself. And knew then she’d do what Leah wanted and knew also it was her duty to not acquiesce, to drag forth all argument. And felt behind this all men, the simple fact of manhood and their great abiding, the gift they held and also the curse. To see things simply with resolution determined when all life was trial and guess. At best.

  Leah spoke. As if explaining elemental process to a child yet with bold straightforwardness not to be denied. “I’m bleeding a little bit. I don’t know what that means. It’s most nearly a month early. My water’s not broke and I’ve got no cramps. Not yet anyhow. All of that I guess could happen any moment. Or a week from now. Or three like it should. Or I might be set to lose this baby. All those things. And I don’t know which. Won’t until I do. What I know is this: Norman went and did what he felt best to do. Didn’t ask me but told me. Now, that shaken old man called doctor ain’t so much as going to take down these covers and probe me. It just ain’t gon’ happen. He might do all that and be right with what he has to say but I ain’t got trust with him. Not one smack of trust. And I do trust Marthe. So I want you to go get her. It’s simple as that.”

  Connie felt all her wind wrapped tight in her throat behind her tongue. She said, “I can’t, Leah. I promised Norman. I can’t do it.”

  “Ask you something. Who’s having this baby? Norman? Or me?”

  “I know that. I just can’t do it.”

  “Whyever not?”