The Fields of Home Page 4

  The orchard wasn’t more than ten acres, but it was half an hour before Grandfather got around it the first time. He stopped the mowing machine just beyond the tree I was trying to mow under, and hollered, “What in the name of creation be you trying to do?”

  “I never tried to use one of these things before,” I told him, “and I haven’t got the hang of it yet.”

  “Gorry sakes alive!” he said, as he came toward me. “You might have et it off evener with your teeth. Why, you ain’t got the amount of sense the Almighty give to hens.”

  I was mad enough at myself for not being able to make the scythe do what I wanted it to, and when Grandfather said that, I couldn’t help boiling over. “It looks just about as bad as the swath you’ve cut, doesn’t it?” I shouted back. “Only you had a machine to do it for you.” Then I hooked the scythe on a limb and started to walk away.

  Grandfather’s voice dropped right down. “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie,” he said. “’Tain’t no fault of your’n, I don’t cal’late, that you ain’t been learned nothing. Here, let your old grampa show you how to swing a snath and scythe. Pass me the whetstone.”

  You’d have thought Grandfather’s wrist and elbow were on ball bearings. There wasn’t more than two inches of the whetstone sticking up out of his fist, but he swiped it forward and back along both sides of the scythe edge so fast my eye couldn’t follow his hand, and at every stroke he stoned the blade from heel to point. After about a minute, he ran his thumbnail the length of the blade, and said, “There! There, by gorry, Ralphie! Now we’ll see what kind of logs makes wide shingles!”

  Grandfather slipped the broken stone into his pocket, grasped the hand grips on the snath, and had the scythe swinging as he brought it down. Little as he was, he kept in perfect balance as he swung the long blade, and he made it whistle each time it swept forward through the grass. Closely as I watched him, I never saw a jerk or pull anywhere. The ground was littered with stones—some of them as big as my head—and the scythe rode over every one without touching it. When he’d gone eight or ten feet, he stopped and held the scythe out toward me. “There you be, Ralphie,” he said. “Ain’t nothing to it ’cepting to watch out for rocks. Tarnal hard to see some of ’em where the grass is rank. Now let your old grampa see you swing it.”

  I did a little better after that, but not very well. For the next half hour, Grandfather alternated between scolding me for being awkward and telling me I was beginning to get the hang of it. Then he went back to the mowing machine. It was out of my sight when I heard Grandfather shouting, and thought he must be in bad trouble. I went running over there as fast as I could and, when I got to where I could see them, he was pulling at the buckskin’s bridle and shouting into his face, “Gitap! Gitap, you fool colt! What ails you? Gitap, I tell you!”

  Grandfather dropped the bridle rein when I came running up, and said, “Might just as leave unhitch him. Tarnal stubborn critter! Ain’t ary man this side the Androscoggin River can make him pull once he gets his head sot on balking.”

  One of the men I’d worked for in Colorado was an expert with balky horses. I didn’t know all the tricks, but I’d learned enough of them that I never had much trouble with his horses, and I was sure I wouldn’t have any with the yella colt. “Let me try him,” I said to Grandfather, and reached for a piece of thin wire that was twisted around one of the old horse’s traces.

  “Stand back! Stand back!” Grandfather snapped at me. “For aught I know he’ll commence having one of his cat fits any minute now.”

  As if the yella colt had understood him, he began shaking his head and slatting around. “Whoa, colty! Whoa! Whoa!” Grandfather shouted as if the horse had been a mile away. “Unhitch Old Nell quick, Ralphie, whilst I loose the colt. Look lively afore he staves the whole shootingmatch to smithereens! Ain’t nothing to do now but fetch him back to the barn.”

  That was the end of our haying for the day. As soon as the horses were unharnessed and in their stalls, Grandfather set me to sawing firewood with a bucksaw, and went down to do something around the beehives.

  I didn’t see a thing of Millie all afternoon, but my dirty clothes had been washed and were hanging on the clothesline. It was nearly sunset, and I was as hungry as a coyote when Grandfather called, “Leave be, Ralphie! I and you’ll go fetch the cows.” He came climbing up over the yard wall, looked at the pile of wood I’d sawed, and said, “Gorry sake! Ain’t half bad for a boy that don’t know no more’n you do about farming, Ralphie. Cal’late your old grampa can make a man out of you yet. Did Charlie learn you to handle a bucksaw?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Father taught me to do quite a few things, and I’ve learned a little bit from other men, too.”

  “Poor boy! Poor boy! Shame they didn’t learn you nothing worth while, ’cepting to saw wood. Oh, well, what’s the odds? You’re still young enough, and your old grampa’ll learn you.”

  Most of the way out through the fields, he kept pointing this or that spot out to me, and telling me long stories about what happened there when his father first took the land up from the wilderness, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. I’d been told enough that day—mostly about what a fool boy I was and what my old grampa was going to learn me—and I didn’t want to hear any more. I told myself that I’d stay there till the hay was in if it killed me, but I’d let him do his learning to somebody else. I’d worked for plenty of ranchers, and for market gardeners, too. Any one of them would hire me again, and none of them had ever yelled at me or called me a fool boy. The minute the last forkful of hay was in the barn, I’d start for Colorado.

  All the way up the long hill beside the orchard, I kept thinking about the people I’d go to see as soon as I got back to Colorado, and Grandfather kept on talking. Old Bess was walking along beside him, and he might just as well have been doing his talking to her. To me, it was just sound: like brook water makes in running over stones. At the top of the orchard, he took hold of my arm and pointed toward a field of spindly hay that stretched across the crown of the hill. “Curious,” he said, “that high field yonder. Father and my half-brothers cleared it afore ever I was born. Take heed the wall here! Nary stone bigger’n a sweet punkin. Mark them little cobbles ’mongst the hay! Millions of ’em no bigger’n a goose egg. I cal’late they draw heat from the sun. First field in twenty miles roundabouts to thaw in the spring, and last to freeze up in the fall. Late and early frosts never touches it.”

  I’d heard what he said, but I was still thinking about Colorado, and said, “Too bad it isn’t richer ground.”

  Grandfather jerked his hand off my arm, and snapped, “Ain’t nothing wrong with the soil! Who said there was? Plenty good cow dressing and that little field’ll grow two ton of good timothy hay.”

  “I didn’t mean that I thought there was anything wrong with it,” I said, “and I don’t know very much about dressing. . . . ”

  “Hmfff! Don’t know much about nothing worth while!”

  “Well, I know about strawberries and tomatoes,” I said.

  “What you know about ’em; how to eat ’em?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know how to eat them. And I worked for a man in Colorado who knew how to raise them. He had a high, warm field for them, and he always got the highest prices because his strawberries and tomatoes were the first ones to ripen in the . . . ”

  “Hmfff! Hmfff! Strawb’ries!” Grandfather exploded. “Time and tarnation! Tomatoes and strawb’ries! Garden sass! Garden sass! Why in thunderation didn’t somebody learn you something worth while?”

  “They did!” I snapped back before I could catch myself.

  “Mind your manners!” Grandfather shouted. Then he reached out and took hold of my arm again, but didn’t take hold hard. “Poor boy! Poor Ralphie!” he said. “Tarnal shame to let a boy grow up so know-nothing. Your old grampa’ll learn you. No, Ralphie, no. This here is hay soil. ’Tain’t good for nothing else. Gorry sakes, we better fetch the cows in afore Millie’s supper gets co
ld. Ain’t no living with her whenst her victuals gets cold.”

  We’d been walking along the brow of the hill, where it dipped away eastward toward Lisbon Valley. The crown of the hill was to the westward and, as we passed it, I noticed a few cows and calves standing at a pasture gate beyond. Grandfather slipped one arm inside mine. “Ralphie,” he said, “your old grampa’s powerful glad to have you here. The land’s been a-crying for young hands. I done the best I could after Frankie went off to Portland to learn a trade, but I and Old Bess was all alone . . . Levi off a-homesteading in Dakota, the big barn burning flat to the ground, the malaria keeping me abed half the time. I catched it whilst I was off to the war . . . seems like it bothers me a sight worse since I lost your gramma. Kind of had hopes when Mary wed, maybe her and Charlie’d come home to the old place to rear their family. I and your father could have cleared a power of land. I and you’ll clear a power of it yet, Ralphie, soon’s ever I learn you to be a farmer. Father was older’n I be afore ever I was born, but he learnt me all there is to know about the land. Poor boy! Poor Ralphie! Your old grampa’ll yet learn you to be a worth-while man.”

  When he’d first started talking, I’d wanted to squeeze his arm against me a little, but before he was through I’d taken mine off his and moved far enough away that he couldn’t put it back. We were nearly to the pasture gate, and four cows were waiting there. It was easy to see that they were all milch cows, and not very good ones. Three of them had pretty good sized calves running with them, and the fourth had her head over the bars, bellowing. So I wouldn’t act as peeved at Grandfather as I felt, I said, “Do you just take the Holstein in for milking?”

  “No! Take ’em all in!” Grandfather said, grumpily.

  Then, as I let the bars down, he and Old Bess stood beside the gatepost. As each cow passed him, he put a hand on her or patted her and called her by name. Even Clara Belle, the Holstein without a calf, stopped long enough for him to scratch the tuft of hair between her horns before she hurried off down the lane. Next was Jessie, a thin old Jersey with a fat heifer calf. Spotty, a Durham with a steer calf three or four months old; and Marthy, just a nice old brown cow with a heifer calf that looked like a Jersey.

  As we started to follow them down the lane, I said, “The nights don’t get very cold here at this time of year, do they?”

  Grandfather seemed to have forgotten all about the cows. The thumb of one hand was hooked around the finger of the other behind him, his head was down, and he leaned a little forward from the hips as he stumped along. “No,” he said after a little while. Then, after a few more steps, “Why?”

  “Well,” I said, “I wondered why you didn’t leave the cows with calves in the pasture at night. There aren’t any coyotes or wolves to bother them, are there?”

  Grandfather stopped and looked up at me as though he didn’t believe anybody could ask such a foolish question. “Gorry sakes alive, boy!” he said at last. “Don’t you know nothing? How’d you raise crops without cow manure? You got to take ’em in to save the dressing.”

  “They raise pretty good crops in Colorado—if they have enough irrigation water—and they don’t put cow manure on the fields,” I told him. “We put horse manure under our first potatoes on the ranch and they all went to tops.”

  “Hmfff! Tarnal fools! Hoss manure’s for hay!” Then he put his head back down, and didn’t say another word till we were at the barn.

  Millie had made a johnnycake to go with the fried pork and boiled potatoes for supper, and we had some of the cake that I hadn’t had a chance to try at noon, but the tea was terrible. It tasted as if it had been made by boiling musty alfalfa, and it was so strong you couldn’t see the spoon handle under the surface. She and Grandfather put milk and sugar in theirs. I tried it, but it was still as bitter as quinine. Though I didn’t mean to, I must have made a face when I tasted it, because the only thing Millie said to me all through supper was, “Don’t be so devilish finicky about your victuals! There’s worse where there’s none!”

  Grandfather didn’t eat anything but a piece of cake and a cup of tea, and he dozed off to sleep at the table a couple of times before I’d finished. He was still asleep, with his head resting on the table, when Millie got up and took a faded old calico wrapper from a nail behind the kitchen door. She put it on over the fresh one she was wearing, tied a cloth over her head, and took a milk bucket down from the pantry shelf. I could see she was going out to do the barn chores, and said, “I’ll take care of the chores; I’ve done a lot of milking.”

  All she said was, “Hmfff! I pity the poor critters!” and went out through the summer kitchen.

  I couldn’t just sit in the house and let a woman do the barn work, so I took my cap and followed her. When I got there, she was standing at the tie-up doorway, pulling a pair of old rubbers on over her shoes. I tried again to get her to let me do the milking, but she said Clara Belle had a sore teat and would kick the daylights out of me. She did let me slop the hogs and do the rest of the chores, though.

  When we went back to the house, Grandfather had gone to bed. Millie told me she had put my things in the front room at the head of the stairs, and she made me take my work shoes off before I went up. She came to the foot of the stairs while I was climbing them, and whispered, “That’s Levi’s room. If you go and get it all messed up, I’ll skin you alive.” Then, without saying goodnight, she went back into the kitchen and closed the hallway door.

  There was just enough light left in the sky that I could see where the bed was and that a corner of the covers was turned back. I didn’t bother to look for my suitcase or a lamp, but took off everything except my BVDs and crawled in. I must have gone to sleep awfully quick, because the next thing I knew Millie was calling up the stairway, “Get up! What be you; cal’lating on sleeping the whole blessed day?” It was just about as light as it had been when I went to bed.

  6

  I Currycomb the Yella Colt

  MILLIE had a lamp lighted and was building a fire in the cook stove when I came down to the kitchen. I said good morning to her when I came in from the front stairway, but she only grumbled something about hoping she’d find the fires of hell built with Getchell birch when she got there. I didn’t know what Getchell birch was but, as I washed my face and hands at the pump sink in the back pantry, I could see she was having a bad time getting the fire started. Twice, she jerked a stove lid off, threw in kerosene from a tin dipper, and slammed the lid back as the flames shot up. Both times, red glowed from the front of the stove for half a minute, then died down, and billows of smoke poured out from every crack.

  The wood I’d sawed the afternoon before had been hard maple, but it had been dry and I knew it would make a good fire. I didn’t say anything to Millie, but went out and split an armful of it into kindling, picked up a couple of pine knots, and took it into the kitchen. Smoke was still pouring from the stove, and Millie was jawing away to herself about it. She didn’t pay any attention to me until I’d put the wood in the wood box and was taking the milk bucket down from the pantry shelf. Then she said, “Leave be! Thomas don’t want the milking done afore six o’clock. I’ll take care of that; you fetch the swill to the sow with the new litter. And take heed you don’t tromp on none of them little pigs.”

  I took the swill bucket from under the sink. It was full almost to the brim with dishwater, and I was careful not to slop a drop of it until I was outside the summer kitchen. When I opened the barn doors, the bay mare whinnied for her breakfast, but the old buckskin snaked his head out over the half-door and snapped at me as I passed his stall. His teeth didn’t miss my shoulder by more than half an inch. I had trouble not to dodge away from him, but I didn’t, and by the time I got to the sow’s pen I had my mind made up about the way I was going to handle him.

  It was only quarter of five, and if Grandfather didn’t want the milking done before six I’d have plenty of time. I worked just as fast as I could while I lugged water to the hogs in the barn cellar, measured them
out a quart of corn apiece, cleaned the tie-up, and climbed the mow to pitch down hay for the horses. Then I cleaned the mare’s stall, bedded it with loose chaff from the barn floor, and fed her, but I didn’t go near the buckskin. The night before, Millie had told me to give the horses bran, but that morning I gave the bay mare whole corn. I wanted to be sure the buckskin would hear her chewing it. I currycombed and brushed her while she ate, and listened to him stamping, snorting, and raking his teeth across the timbers of his stall.

  When the mare was almost finished with her corn, and when the old buckskin was nearly frantic, I slipped out of her stall with the currycomb in my hand, took his bridle down from its spike, and went toward his stall door. As his head came shooting out over the half-door, it looked like the pictures of a Chinese dragon. I swung the bridle in front of my face, just the way Grandfather had but, with the other hand, I slipped the currycomb up in front of the blinder. The buckskin bit it so hard that he turned down a whole row of the sharp teeth, then snorted, and snapped three times more in quick succession. I didn’t swing the currycomb at him, but each time I was careful to see that it was where he’d bump his lips or teeth against it. After the third bump, he whirled, crowded his head into the far corner of the stall, and stood dancing.