The Fields of Home Read online

  In the split second before I fell, I saw a big black hog, with a shepherd dog dragging at his ear, come shooting out of the darkness. I bumped my head when the hog knocked me over and was dizzy when I tried to get onto my feet. For a few seconds, I just balanced myself there on my hands and knees while things seemed to go floating around me. The hog, shrieking like a fire whistle, went racing away, and the doorways of the barn seemed to be teetering. Framed in one of them was a woman in a pink dress, holding a broom like a baseball bat, and yelling. In the other was a little man, with a big reddish beard, that I knew must be Grandfather. He was waving a long-handled shovel and shouting, “Tarnal idjit! Why didn’t you head him off? Who be you? Who sent you here?”

  With my good suit ruined and his shouting at me, I couldn’t help being peeved. I climbed to my feet and I snapped right back, “Ralph Moody! My mother sent me!”

  We were standing facing each other through the doorway. Grandfather weighed about a hundred pounds, and the top of his head came about level with my chin. When I spoke, both arms dropped to his sides, he looked up into my face—almost the way a dog looks up at you when he wants to be patted—and said, “Why . . . why . . . why, you’re Mary’s boy. You’re Ralphie.”

  Grandfather and I just stood there for a full minute. Then he took both my arms in his hands, and said, “Stand around here, Ralphie! Stand around so’s your old grampa can get a look at you. By fire, you’re going to make a tall one, just like your father.” He gave his head a couple of quick nods and looked up at my face again. “Favor him, too,” he said. Then he squeezed the muscles in my arms, and nodded once more. “Got the same kind of hard, stringy build. Your father was a powerful stout man for a slim build. Millie, come here, see my daughter Mary’s boy!”

  Millie had already come. She looked at my dripping suit, and said, “Well, he ain’t a sight for sore eyes! Better fetch him up to the house while I get some water het. Them clothes’ll stink like a polecat if I don’t get ’em washed out pretty devilish quick.” Then she snapped at me, “Didn’t you fetch no clean clothes?”

  She only waited long enough for me to tell her there were clean clothes in my suitcase, and that I’d left it beside the road. “Well, fetch it!” she said, and started climbing up over the boulder wall to the dooryard. She was nearly as tall as I, and was neither fat nor thin. I thought she must be about thirty, just as Mr. Swale had said. From the easy way she went up the side of the high wall, I could see that she was as strong as a man, and though she spoke and acted rough, her face didn’t look that way. It wasn’t wrinkled, and was white instead of tanned. Her eyes were blue, and her hair was dark brown. It was drawn tight back from a white parting place in the middle, braided, and wound into a big knot at the back of her head. From the top of the wall, she looked back, and said, “Well, go fetch it! Don’t stand there gawking like a ninny!” Then she turned and walked away.

  Grandfather squeezed my arm again, and almost shouted, “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie, your old grampa’s powerful glad to see you, boy! How’s Mary? How’s all the rest the children? Six of you, ain’t there? Seen Levi of late?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Everybody’s fine, and Mother said she’d write you a letter.” Then I started back along the track I’d made through the hayfield. I’d only taken a couple of steps when Grandfather caught my sleeve, and said, “No, Ralphie, we’ll go roundabouts, so’s we don’t tromp down the hay and make it hard mowing. Want to show you my new swarm of bees. Blackbelts. Fetched on from up to Canada. Powerful good honey-makers and a thundering great colony of ’em. Cal’late they’ll be swarming afore long.”

  As he talked, he led me along the foot of the boulder wall toward a dozen or so white beehives. They were set, helter-skelter, under two great apple trees, just a few yards down the hill from the side of the house. All I knew about bees was that they had stingers and made honey, and that I’d a lot rather go without the honey than to have the stings. Grandfather didn’t seem to feel that way. He kept tight hold of my arm, ducked low, and led me in under the nearest tree. Bees were as thick in the air as flies around a molasses barrel. Two of them lit on his whiskers, and I was sure I could feel one crawling on the back of my neck. I made a quick move to brush it off, but Grandfather caught my arm, and said, “Take care! Take care! You got to be gentle with bees. Might sting you.”

  Grandfather reached out and took the cover off the newest looking hive. Inside, it was alive with crawling bees. Down in the cracks between the dividers, I could see them squirming over each other, and it made the nerves under my skin squirm the same way. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, but Grandfather whispered, “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie, mark how they’re a-fetching in the honey. By thunder, won’t some of that on hot biscuits hit the right spot come next winter? Your old grampa’ll learn you all about bees. Curious critters, bees. Let’s cover ’em over and leave ’em to their work.” Then he eased the top onto the hive carefully, and I was awfully glad when we ducked out from under the tree.

  The thing I wanted most was to get my suitcase and a bath, but Grandfather wouldn’t hurry. He kept hold of my arm as though I were a horse and it a halter rope, and he’d stop me every time he wanted to say something. We’d just ducked out from under the apple tree, when he stopped and said, “Don’t cal’late you recollect the old place very good, Ralphie. You was just a sniveling, wet-nosed young one whenst Mary last fetched you down. Long wood-shaving curls. Same color as new pine. Never liked curls on a boy. Gorry sakes, how time does fly! Must have been the summer of ’98; year afore I bought the Bowdoin woodlot.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” I told him. “I wasn’t born until December of that year.”

  “’Twas t . . . ,” Grandfather flared up for just a second. Then he seemed to catch himself, and said, “Well, what’s the odds? ’Twas afore Mary took Charlie and you children gallivanting off out west. Now what was it I was about to show you?”

  Grandfather pushed his battered old hat back and scratched the little bald spot on his head. “Now that’s curious, ain’t it? ’Twas right on the tip of my tongue. Great thunderation! Don’t cal’late your grampa’s getting old enough to be forgetful, do you? ’Course not! ’Course not! I ain’t but seventy-two. Gorry sakes! Father was older’n I be afore ever I was born. House is thirty-odd years older’n I be. There! There, Ralphie! That done it! Mark that hump of ground yonder . . . ’twixt the Pearmain and the Black Oxford apple trees? There’s where Father build his first house . . . year of 1794 . . . the one where the owls come down the chimney and stole the cat. Gorry sakes alive! The old kettle’s ’round here somewheres; like as not it’s up in the open chamber. Used to put it over the cat, come night, so’s the owls couldn’t steal her away.”

  “Some day I’d like to see it,” I said, “but don’t you think I’d better get my suitcase now?”

  “Gorry sakes, yes!” Grandfather said, and started leading me toward the roadway. “Better get it afore the woodchucks does. Tarnal pesky critters! Old Bess ain’t keeping ’em down of late the way she used to. Eyes is getting bad. Tarnal shame the way a man and a dog starts a-falling to pieces afore their time. Old Bess ain’t more’n fourteen, be you, girl?”

  I’d been looking out for bees so hard that I hadn’t noticed Bess was with us. As though she understood every word Grandfather said, she put her muzzle against his knee, and closed her eyes as he stroked her head. Before she closed them, I noticed they were both milky blue, and that the sides of her face were grizzled like an old man’s beard. “Poor Old Bess. Poor Old Bess,” Grandfather half whispered as he stroked her, “I and her kept house together nigh onto ten years afore Millie come. By fire, I must have miscal’lated somewheres. Let me see . . . Let me see . . . Wa’n’t Bess here whenst Mary fetched you children down home afore she went off out west?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “She didn’t bring me that time, but don’t you think I’d better get my . . . ”

  That’s as far as I got. Grandfathe
r didn’t seem to have heard me. He slapped his leg so hard that Bess jumped, and he almost shouted, “Gorry sakes alive! Now I recollect! Frankie fetched her home afore he went off to Portland to learn a trade. Come out of a litter old Sid Purrinton’s bitch had. Must have been the early spring of ’97. Great thunderation! Don’t seem like ’twas more’n a fortnight agone. Yessiree, I recollect Bess being along whenst I dickered with Sid for the Bowdoin woodlot. Got in a ruction with a tarnal great skunk. Stunk to high heaven, and I had to wash her belly off with vinegar afore her puppies would nurse.”

  Grandfather kept hold of my arm until we were nearly halfway to my suitcase. Then he stopped suddenly and pointed up across the fields, toward the woods that covered the hilltop half a mile to the south. “Mark that all-fired great white oak yonder?” he asked me. I didn’t know much about trees and, at that distance, I couldn’t tell one from another.

  The hill sloped away eastward toward the valley. At the highest point, there was a low growth of dark green that looked to me like pine. A little farther down, the color was lighter, and the treetops had rounded domes, so I thought they’d be hardwood. Near the bottom of the slope, the color was so dark it looked almost black. The growth was heavy enough that it seemed to be a solid bank with, here and there, a steeple-shaped top rising above the bank. Near the center, two great trees rose high above the others. They stood, shoulder to shoulder against the skyline, like twin brothers in waist-high clover. “You mean one of those big ones in the dark patch?” I asked him.

  “Oak! Oak, I told you! Them’s virgin pine! What ails you? Thought Levi said you was a farmer! Don’t you know oak from pine? Yonder! Yonder! In a line ’twixt Niah’s field and the orchard wall.”

  I could see a straggly old orchard on the near side of the hill, and a stonewall around it, but I had no idea which might be Niah’s field, and Grandfather’s big-jointed finger shook enough that he could have been pointing at a thousand trees. “Yonder! Yonder!” he said again. “’Twixt them seedling pines and beech woods.”

  I didn’t like his shouting at me, or his acting as if I was a complete idiot. And I didn’t care which tree he was talking about, just so long as he’d hurry up and get it over with. I didn’t shout back at him, but my voice was a little louder than it should have been when I said, “I can see it.”

  Grandfather’s voice dropped down until it was as gentle as it had been when he was petting Old Bess. “Thundering great tree, ain’t it? You wouldn’t hardly believe it, Ralphie, but Father’s sheep et off the top of it whenst he first took up the land. Had to fence it roundabouts with poles to save it. Et it back so far it growed three trunks from a single stump. You mark that Norway pine to westward; the one on a line ’twixt the two Gravenstein trees atop the orchard?”

  I’d never even heard of a Norway pine, but I nodded my head, and my voice was quiet when I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s where the parent tree stood, Ralphie; tallest white oak in all the country roundabouts; the one Father clim whenst he blazed his way inland from the Androscoggin and the Almighty marked him this piece of ground. Lightning blasted it whilst I was off to war. Strong as iron. Only one little log of it left; I’m a-saving that for wagon tongues. Did ever I tell you, Ralphie, ’bout . . . ”

  Millie’s voice broke in as though she were shouting through a megaphone, “Victuals is getting cold!”

  “Victuals! Victuals! Victuals!” Grandfather snapped. “Tarnal, pesky woman! Can’t think of nothing but victuals and scrubbing! Worse’n Levi!” Then his voice dropped right down, and he said, “Wish Levi’d come home. Ain’t been down since the snow went off. Better fetch your valise, Ralphie. Millie won’t be fit to live with if her victuals gets cold.” Then he and Bess started slowly back toward the house.

  When I brought my suitcase into the dooryard, Millie was waiting on the back doorstone. Her voice was sharp when she frowned at me and said, “There’s soap and a tub of water in the woodshed. Better use ’em good and plenty. I ain’t going to have no dirty, stinking boys around here.” Then she turned and went into the house.

  I scrubbed until I was redder than fire, dried myself, pulled on my clean clothes, emptied the tub, and hurried to the kitchen door. From what I’d already heard, I expected to find Grandfather and Millie at each other’s throats, but they were both at the table and seemed as happy as a couple of birds in the spring.

  “Come right in, Ralphie! Come right in!” Grandfather called. “Millie baked us a nice good sugar cake for dinner. Never see ary woman could bake a better sugar cake than Millie.”

  Anyone could have seen that Millie liked to have him say it, but she stuck her nose up a little, and said, “’Taint up to my usual. Devilish Getchell birch I been getting for firewood ain’t fit for fence rails. Got to stand and blow on it to get spark enough to melt grease.”

  The dinner was boiled potatoes and fried salt pork, just as Mr. Swale had said it would be, but there was plenty of it and it was good. Grandfather talked more than he ate, and he kept his knife waving as he talked—sort of like a band leader. Two or three times, he dropped the piece of pork he had balanced on it, and then put the empty knife into his mouth. “Gorry sakes alive, Millie,” he said, “with Ralphie here to help us, I cal’late we’ll have the hay a-flying like goose feathers. Wouldn’t be a mite surprised if we had it all fetched home to the mows afore company reunion time. Ain’t been to a reunion since . . . Gorry sakes . . . Ain’t been since the first year you come; the summer Levi was to home. Wisht Levi’d come down this summer.”

  He sat looking at his plate for a minute, then his head jerked up, and he said, “Eat your victuals! Eat your victuals, Ralphie! Cal’late to get a start on the orchard hay this afternoon. I’ll go provender the hosses.”

  3

  The Yella Colt

  I HADN’T half finished eating my dinner when Grandfather left the table. From what he’d said about his going to feed the horses, it didn’t seem to me I’d have to hurry. I knew it would take them half an hour to eat, and I was still as empty as a last year’s gourd. I’d just reached for another potato when Millie said, “Better get them victuals into you as fast as the Lord’ll allow; your grandfather won’t put up with no dawdling ’round the house.” I ate so fast I got a lump under my wishbone and hurried after Grandfather.

  I’d worked plenty in the hayfields in Colorado. When I was only eleven years old and weighed seventy pounds, I’d been paid a man’s wages for running a horserake or mowing machine. Father could always pitch more hay in a day than any other man in the neighborhood, and he’d taught me the tricks when I was little. Out there, we’d put up stacks of hay that had more than a hundred tons in each one of them, and I wanted to show Grandfather that I knew just how every part of it was done.

  He wasn’t anywhere in the barn. There were box stalls just inside the big doors. As I passed the first one, a buckskin horse poked his head out and snapped at me. His ears were pinned back tight against his head, white showed around his eyes, the way it does on a fighting stallion’s, and his whole muzzle was peppered with gray hairs. There was a fat sleepy-looking bay mare in the next stall. She didn’t bother to raise her head from the feedbox when I stopped at the doorway of her stall, and I only stopped long enough to notice that she was just fat instead of with foal.

  There was a sow, nursing a litter of new pigs, in the next stall, and the rest of the main floor was empty. Pigeons were cooing somewhere in the high loft and, as I looked up, a barn swallow swooped from its mud nest on the ridgepole and glided out through the open doorway. There was the smell of new hay in the barn, but I could only see a fringe of it hanging over the edge of a low mow. On the other side, over the box stalls, the mows were filled to the rafters with bleached hay that looked to be two or three years old.

  I thought Grandfather might have gone to the barn cellar, so I jumped down over the wall and went to see. He wasn’t there, but the hog was. I could hear him grunting, back in the darkness. I went in, and kept my eyes
closed till I could see in the dimness. In the center of the cellar, there was a pit about thirty feet square. It held a brownish pond, with a mountain of manure in the middle. There was a two-foot path around it, and, back against the walls on the three sides, there were rows of pigpens. On one of them the gate was broken and lying, half buried, at the edge of the pond. I fished it out and propped it across the path beside the open pen. Then I shaded my eyes, went out, and came in on the side of the pit where the hog was. He didn’t give me a bit of trouble. As I went toward him slowly, he looked up from his rooting, grunted a couple of times, then turned and walked along the path. When he came to the open gateway, he went in.

  I hadn’t seen or heard anything of Grandfather since he’d left the dinner table. After I’d wired the gate into place, I decided to go and look at the horses again. As I was going through the big front barn doors, I heard Grandfather holler from behind me. He had on a wide-brimmed straw hat with a big white veil, and was down at the beehives under the apple trees. “Take care, Ralphie! Take care the yella colt!” he called as he came scrambling up over the dooryard wall.

  I hadn’t seen any colt when I’d been in the barn before, but I was glad to hear there was one. While I was waiting for Grandfather, I was thinking how much fun it would be to harness-break a colt. I hoped he might be old enough to ride. Grandfather pulled the bee hat off as he came, and dropped it by the pile of cordwood at the top of the wall. “Afore we start to haying, we got to get that tarnal pig in,” he called as he came toward me. “Can’t find hide nor hair of the pesky critter nowheres.”

  “He’s back in his pen,” I told him. “The gate’s broken, but I wired it up so it will hold till we can make a new one.”

  Grandfather stopped in front of me and looked up with a scowl, as though he thought I were lying to him. “Who put him in?” he asked.