The Fields of Home Page 5

  I’d expected him to act just the way he had with Grandfather, and was inside the stall door by the time he had his head in the corner. Then I was lucky. With Grandfather, he’d gone into the corner with his head high and his back straight. With me, he went with his head low and his back humped. When I was only eight years old Father had taught me to look out for flying heels when a horse got into that position. And he’d taught me that the closer I was to them when they flew, the less I’d get hurt. Without ever stopping to figure it out, I jumped to the side of the buckskin’s rump, and swung the currycomb up hard from my knee. It caught him on the near hock as his leg flew past my hip, and it caught him hard. He snorted, swung his rump toward me, and kicked again. That time I didn’t try to hide the currycomb, but smashed it hard against his hock as the legs came up.

  If I’d misguessed him, and he was really a bad horse, I could be in plenty of trouble, and I knew it. I had to keep telling myself so, as I crowded in against him with the currycomb ready to swing. If he ever found out he could scare me I’d never be able to handle him, and I knew he had his mind made up to find out. His head swung toward me, with his nostrils opened to the size of coffee cups, his ears back, and white showing around his eyes. Then he began to crowd. The solid wall was only two feet from my back. If I tried to dodge out, his heels would certainly catch me before I could get to the door, and I could only use the currycomb if I was in close. If I went toward his head, no currycomb could stop him from tearing me to pieces with his teeth. There was only one thing I could do: I had to scare him before he knew he’d scared me.

  If it had taken me a tenth as long to think it as to tell it, I might have been killed, but it didn’t. I stayed tight against his rump and, the second he began crowding me toward the wall, I started beating a tattoo on his belly with the sharp teeth of the currycomb. His back hunched against the bite of the comb, every muscle in his body was pulled as tight as a fiddlestring, and he kept crowding until I could see the wall just behind my shoulder. Then, with a half snort, half groan, the wind went out of him—just as it does with a toy balloon that has had a hole poked in it. He didn’t dance, but moved over against the far wall and stood, sulking and watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  I felt a little trembly all over as I moved up to the buckskin’s head. He flung it high, with his nose poked nearly to the ceiling. I could have jumped and made a grab for his under lip but, if I had, he might have bitten my hand. Instead, I swung the currycomb up where he could get a good look at it, and his muzzle came part way down. As soon as I’d slipped a thumb in behind his front teeth, he brought his head the rest of the way down and let me put the bridle on. After I’d buckled the cheek strap, I scratched his forehead with my fingers, and looked back along his body. A nerve twitched once or twice in his shoulder, but he wasn’t shivering the way he had after Grandfather hit him with the bridle. I soft-talked him a little, and kept on scratching his forehead until his ears came up. Then I went for the rest of the harness and put it on. The old horse never moved an inch until the last buckle was fastened.

  After I’d led him around the stall a few times, I unharnessed him and fed him. Though I knew a horse got more good from his grain if he’d eaten his hay first, I brought the bran as soon as I had the harness hung up, then curried and brushed him as he ate. He winced a little when I brushed over the spot on his belly where I’d tattooed him with the currycomb, but his ears stayed up and he didn’t lift a foot. I thought it might be getting close to six o’clock, so I took the currycomb to the carriage house, straightened the bent teeth, put it back in the barn, and went to the house.

  Grandfather was nowhere in sight, but Millie was slicing boiled potatoes into an iron frying pan on the stove. The kitchen was clear of smoke, and a red glow was coming from the open front of the stove. I took the milk bucket down from the pantry shelf, and asked, “Is it time to milk yet?”

  Instead of answering, Millie turned toward me and looked straight into my eyes with her mouth clamped together tight. “What was you up to with the yella colt?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t like currycombing,” was all I said.

  She didn’t look away from my eyes, and she didn’t change the expression on her face. “Better stay away from him,” she said. “He devilish near killed a couple of hired hands that tried to get smart with him. Thomas is the only one can handle him.”

  I kept looking right at her, and said, “I’m not going to get smart with him, and he’s not going to get smart with me. How much milk do you want me to bring to the house?”

  “A quart’s enough. That maple you fetched in burns pretty good. Breakfast’ll be ready when you’re done milking.” Her voice wasn’t soft, but there wasn’t any crabbiness in it.

  When I went back into the barn, the yella colt shot his head out over the half-door. His ears were pinned back, he snorted when he saw who it was, and he snapped, but it was just to let off steam. His teeth whacked together like trap springs, but his muzzle only jerked a few inches in my direction. So he would know I wasn’t afraid of him, I went right up close, but I had the milk bucket all ready to swing if I needed it. I didn’t. He drew his head back in, and picked up a mouthful of hay as if there had been no one within a mile.

  With all Millie’s having told me the night before that the Holstein heifer would kick the daylights out of me, she didn’t raise a foot when I milked her. And if she had a sore teat I didn’t find it. As soon as the milk began singing in the bottom of the bucket, three cats showed up from somewhere, and Old Bess came into the tie-up and sat watching me. I aimed a stream of milk at her head, the way I used to do with our dog in Colorado, but she didn’t know about opening her mouth to catch it. She just sat there, wagging her tail and licking the milk off her lips with her tongue. When I’d stripped the last drops, I found an old pan and filled it with warm milk for her and the cats.

  Though I hadn’t seen it, I knew the Holstein had a calf in the sheep barn. I’d heard it bawl, and she had stood at the doorway bellowing when we’d brought the cows in the night before. Millie had taken the calf’s supper down to it while I had been watering the hogs in the barn cellar. As soon as I’d fed Bess and the cats, I took the rest of the milk and started to the sheep barn. I was just to the doorway when Grandfather hollered from behind me, “Stay out of there! Mind what you’re doing!” When I looked around, he was coming across the barnyard toward me as fast as he could walk. “Who told you to feed that calf?” he asked me as he got closer.

  “Nobody,” I said, “but I heard Millie come down and feed it last night, and this morning she told me she only wanted a quart of milk at the house.”

  “Didn’t she tell you to mind the spider web?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Rattle-brained girl!” he snapped out, and pushed between me and the doorway. Its frame was made of heavy oak logs, and the open door sagged on thick rawhide hinges. Grandfather put a hand against each of the upright logs, peeked into the darkness of the old barn, and his voice was only a whisper when he said, “Mark it, Ralphie; the all-fired great spider web acrost the top half the inside doorway. Been there nigh onto three weeks. The old spider’ll be hatching out her brood pretty quick now. You have to scooch down low a-going in. I was scairt you was going to blunder into it and smash it all to smithereens.”

  The sheep barn was dug back into the hillside. The roof was of poles with hay and earth over them, and the floor was solid packed clay that was as hard as stone. As we ducked under the spider web and my eyes became used to the dimness, I could see a spotted calf, three or four weeks old, penned in one corner of the old barn. A chipped white porcelain bucket was nailed inside the fencing of the pen, and the calf was butting it with his head. So he wouldn’t slop the milk, I climbed the fence, straddled his neck, and poured all but a quart of it into the chipped bucket. Then I slipped two fingers into his mouth, for teats, and poked his nose into the warm milk. I’d almost forgotten about Grandfather’s being there till he asked,
“Who learned you how to do that?”

  “Father, I guess. It seems as if I’ve always known it.”

  “Well, it’s more’n I thought you knowed, Ralphie. You done it like a real farmer.”

  “I am a real farmer,” I told him. “I just don’t know much about mowing with a hand scythe.”

  “Hmfff! Don’t know nothing about bees or dressing or hay land neither! Strawb’ries and tomatoes! Who ever heard of a farmer that couldn’t swing a snath and scythe? Only fit way to mow a field; ’cepting a man can’t find hired hands with gumption enough to do an honest day’s work for a dollar. You seen how that tarnal mowing machine hogs down the grass and leaves half of it laying flat in the field.”

  “It wouldn’t if it was fixed up in good shape.”

  “Don’t tell me!” Grandfather shouted so loud that the calf let go of my fingers. “Ain’t a machine made that will do ary job as good as a man can do it by hand if he’s got a spark of gumption in him. Wastin’! Wastin’! Lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing farmers nowadays; run into debt for a parcel of fancy machines that ain’t worth a tinker, and go broke afore ever they get ’em paid for.”

  “Father always said that good machinery would pay for itself ten times over.”

  “Father said! Father said! What in time and tarnation did Charlie know ’bout farming anyways? Mill hand, wa’n’t he, whenst Mary wed him? My father took this farm up from the wilderness, cut the timber, pulled the stumps, sot up the stonewalls and cleared the fields, and he didn’t have nothing ’cepting his own two hands, a homemade plow, and a yoke of oxen. Hosses! Hosses! Ain’t a hoss a-living can hold a candle to a Durham ox. Why I recollect . . . ”

  Just at that moment Millie called to us, “Victuals is ready!”

  After breakfast, I harnessed the horses while Grandfather was doing something down at the beehives. I hoped he’d stay there till I had time to tighten the nuts on the mowing machine and give it a good oiling, but he didn’t. He came to the carriage house doorway when I was hunting through the litter on the workbench. “What in thunderation you dawdling ’round there for whenst there’s haying to be done?” he shouted.

  “I was just looking for some wrenches and an oil can,” I told him. “That mowing machine sounds as if it’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “Ain’t nothing the matter with it that ain’t the matter with all the pesky things,” Grandfather snapped. “Now come take care of Old Nell whilst I hitch up the yella colt!”

  As we led the horses over to the machine, I told myself I’d keep my mouth shut even if I could see that the whole shebang was going to explode with the first turn of the wheel. I didn’t do it, though. The bolt on the keeper at the end of the pitman rod was so loose that the sickle head had a half-inch play. I’d heard it hammering the day before, and knew that if it wasn’t tightened it would break the ball joint off. The yella colt was prancing, bobbing his head, and kicking as Grandfather dodged in and out trying to fasten his traces. As soon as I had Old Nell hitched, I picked up a sharp stone and began tapping the keeper nut tighter. “What in time be you playing with now?” Grandfather shouted at me.

  “I’m not playing,” I said. “I’m just trying to tighten this bolt enough that the sickle head won’t break.”

  “Leave be! Leave be, I tell you! First thing you know you’ll have it all busted to smithereens. Hold the yella colt whilst I gather up the reins and get along. Time flies!”

  Time wasn’t all that flew. Grandfather had just yelled, “Gitap! Gitap!” and the yella colt had taken two jackrabbit jumps when wet grass clogged the cutter bar and the loose pitman keeper jerked the head off the sickle.

  “Worthless, useless, meddlesome, big-headed boy!” Grandfather howled. “Now look what you done! Busted it all to smithereens! What in time and tarnation ails you?”

  I opened my mouth to yell back, but bit my teeth together and started for the tree where I’d been mowing. “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie,” Grandfather called after me. “Didn’t cal’late to scold you. Tarnal thing keeps a-busting all the time and likes to drive me to distraction. Guess I and you’d better fetch it in to the carriage house and tinker it up a mite.”

  The tinkering took us all the rest of the forenoon. Grandfather blew off at me a dozen times for wanting to be too fussy, but he let me put in new knife sections to replace the broken ones, turn the grindstone while he half sharpened the rest of them, put a new head on the sickle, and tighten most of the bearings. As soon as we’d eaten dinner, he went down to the beehives and seemed to have forgotten all about haying. I sawed wood ten or fifteen minutes while I was waiting for him, then bridled the horses, hitched them to the mowing machine, and drove to the orchard.

  It was the middle of the afternoon before I saw Grandfather again. By that time, I’d made a dozen rounds of the orchard, and the old machine had worked pretty well. I’d had a little trouble with the yella colt at first, but it hadn’t amounted to much. He’d danced and pranced until he found that I wasn’t paying any attention to him, and then he balked. It only lasted a minute or two. After I’d wired his ears together good and tight with a piece of soft wire, he’d stood, slatting around and bobbing his head. I gave him just time enough to forget he was balking, then picked up the lines, clucked to him, and he walked on, bobbing his head and snorting a little.

  Grandfather didn’t come near us when he came into the field. He took the scythe I’d been using from a limb of the apple tree, looked at the blade, and went to the carriage house. It was nearly an hour before he came back. Then he went to mowing under the trees as though he were all alone in the orchard. The sun was dipping down behind the tops of the pines on the ridge when he called to me, “Take the hosses in and fetch your cows. Victuals’ll be ready afore long.”

  Grandfather went to sleep at the supper table again that night, and Millie let me do the chores by myself.

  7

  Uncle Levi

  IT TOOK me a day and a half to finish mowing the orchard, and I had a good time doing it. The mowing machine didn’t give me much trouble, and the yella colt only balked twice. Both times, Grandfather was away from the field, and the old horse hated having his ears wired so much that neither of his balky spells lasted more than a few minutes. Grandfather didn’t come near the machine once while I was mowing. He spent about half his time away from the orchard, but every time I saw him he was swinging a scythe as fast as he could go.

  My second afternoon was bad. Grandfather gave me a right-handed snath and scythe, and made me mow under the apple trees with him. I’d always been left-handed, the same as he was, and couldn’t make the right-handed scythe come within a foot of going where I wanted it to. I tried hard enough that I got water blisters on both hands, but I couldn’t keep the blade from bumping into rocks. Grandfather scolded at me all afternoon, and the more he scolded the worse I did. When the sun was nearly down to the top of the pines, he shouted, “Hang up that snath and scythe and go fetch the cows! Never seen such an awkward, useless boy in all the days of my life.”

  I was so mad when I brought the cows in that I made up my mind to go back to Colorado just as soon as I could get my suitcase packed. I banged the stanchion bars around the last cow’s neck, stuck the hold-peg in place, and was turning toward the tie-up door when, from just outside, Millie called, “Hurry up, Ralphie! Supper’s on the fire and Levi’s here. I done all the rest of the chores a’ready.” Then she turned and ran back to the house like a little girl.

  When I went into the back pantry I’d have known Uncle Levi was there, even if no one had told me and I couldn’t hear his voice. The table was stacked with big paper bags and bundles. Oranges were spilling out of one bag that was lying on its side. From the shape of another, I knew it was crammed full of bananas and, beside half a dozen smaller bags, there were two big bundles in slick brown paper that I knew would be meat.

  “Hi there, Ralphie!” he called to me from the kitchen as soon as I had my cap off. “How’s Thomas using you?”

 
I couldn’t say anything except, “All right. I didn’t know you were coming down.”

  “Didn’t know it myself,” he called back, “till I got Thomas’s letter making out like he was on the point of death. Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder you ain’t scared ten years off my life! How many times, right in the midst of haying, have you wrote and let on like you was dying?”

  “Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t been feeling up to scratch for more’n a month,” Grandfather snapped at him.

  “Looking pert as a peacock to me,” Uncle Levi told him. “Don’t calc’late there’s nothing wrong with you that a little good meat to eat and a little help in haying won’t fix. Didn’t know Ralphie was down here. Ain’t he considerable help to you?”

  “Hmfff! Ain’t no more of a farmer than you be! Swings a snath and scythe like it was a flail swingle! Wants to fritter away all his time ’round the carriage house tinkering up machinery! By fire! I never seen a boy that thought he knowed so tarnal much and could do so little. Telling me to plant strawb’ries and tomatoes! Hmfff! Take a man a year to learn him you can’t cut stone with a scythe!”

  With Grandfather talking that way about me, I didn’t want to go into the kitchen, so I pumped a panful of water and was all ready to wash my hands when Uncle Levi came out into the back pantry. The first thing he did was to reach out to shake hands, and said, “Thomas don’t think nobody’s a farmer lest he can swing a scythe.”

  The blisters on my hand hurt when Uncle Levi squeezed it, and I guess I winced just a little. He turned my hand over and looked at it. Then he reached for the other one and looked at it too. “Thomas, what in God’s world you been doing with this boy?” he asked sharply.

  “Ain’t been doing nothing ’cepting to try to learn him how to swing a snath and scythe,” Grandfather snapped back.

  “Why ain’t you put gloves on him? His hands looks like two hunks of half et dog meat.”