"It's ridiclus," said Aunt Abigail, on one of her visits to Judith, "the idee o' them folks a-goin' to fightin' each other. It's a shame an' a disgrace an' it'd otta be put a stop to. Even if they air on'y ignernt furrin folks, they'd otta know better."
To the men it was meat and drink. When they gathered in each other's barnyards, the talk was all of war. To sit in the peaceful warmth of a summer afternoon, placidly chewing the mild Burley of their own fields and express their views about the fighting of the foreigners was a rare treat, combining luxuriously the thrills and excitements of war with the comfort and security of peace. They had virtually no basis upon which to form opinions; but opinions they had, none the less. They were as excitable, argumentative, and dogmatic as any group of men in any other walk of life. Each man held his ownconvictions in as high esteem and those of his neighbor in as thorough despisal as if he were a successful manufacturer of toothpaste or a United States senator. The discussions on the war were as animated, as heated, as intelligent, and as generally representative of the different types of male humanity as if they had occurred in a metropolitan club. The fact that on the shady side of Jerry Blackford's cowshed the basis of fact was somewhat more vague and flimsy than that in a Union League clubroom made no essential difference. Each man aired his own ideas as loudly and impressively as he could, and paid no attention whatever to those of any of the others; and there was much honest joy and satisfaction.
"They'd otta have us fellers go on over there an' beat 'em all up. We cud do it easy," opined Ziemer Whitmarsh, who had a prominent chin and the long arms and heavy shoulders of a prize fighter. "'Twouldn't be no chore fer us, would it, Bob?"
"No, siree," chimed in young Bob Crupper. "They'd otta let us at 'em." Bob's chin did not protrude unduly; but he had eyes fearless and dreamy, like those of his father. He was ripe for adventure of any kind: war, women, anything. His eyes wistfully sought the horizon.
"I wish 'twa'n't so durn fur away," he fretted.
Bob's father, old Amos, who was a veteran of the Civil War, had subscribed to a Georgetown paper, and was thus placed in a position of authority as regards facts. But it was the romantic and chivalrous aspects of the war that most appealed to the old soldier, as in the days of his youth; and out of his rich nature he was quick to set up heroes to worship and weave a mythical fabric of glory and chivalry.
"Some o' them generals must be powerful men," he would thunder out in a deep rumble of bass ecstasy. "This here von Kluck, he must be a mighty powerful man. An' the Roosians is a fine people, a strong, powerful people. Them Roosians hain't afraid to die fer their country."
"It'll fetch up the price of tebaccer," mused Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, sagely stroking his lean jaw, "—an' hosses. Terbaccerand hosses is things they used up fast in war. An' terbaccer an' hosses is what we got here in Kentucky. An' everything else'll go up too: hog meat and butter and eggs."
"Yaas, an' flour an' sorghum an' coffee alongside of 'em," grunted old Jonah Cobb pessimistically. "I mind me in Civil War times—"
"Aw, don't croak, Jonah. War times is good times fer the farmer. If we kin git a good price for our terbaccer, we hain't a-goin' to kick about payin' a little extry fer a sack o' biscuit flour."
"A sound of battle is in the land and of great destruction," quoted Uncle Jabez Moorhouse. "Woe onto them, for their time is come, the time of their visitation. The earth shall be utterly emptied and utterly laid waste. Behold, Jehovah maketh the earth empty and maketh it waste and turneth it upside down and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. The earth shall stagger like a drunken man."
He loved the sound of the sonorous rhythms and rolled them on his tongue ecstatically.
"I done heard it was a-coming' this way," hazarded Gus Dibble timorously. "Did any o' you folks hear it was a-comin' this way? If it comes this way, they say we'll all hev to go into it."
Gus Dibble was a skinny, pallid fellow with very bad teeth. He had a wife and two small children and tried to raise tobacco to support them. He also had consumption, asthma, and a hernia.
"Aw, what kind of a notion hev you got, Gus?" scoffed Bob Crupper, who from association with his father had become enlightened. "Don't you know you gotta go acrost the ocean to git to where they're a-fightin'?"
"I dunno," answered Gus, humbly and vaguely. "All I know is they said it was a-comin' this way."
For Judith Blackford and the rest of the women in the solitude of their isolated shanties life moved on as stagnantly as usual, except that the heat and the scarcity of water made it somewhat more disagreeable and difficult. For them there wasno such thing as change nor anything even vaguely resembling a holiday season. Families must be fed after some fashion or other and dishes washed three times a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Babies must be fed and washed and dressed and "changed" and rocked when they cried and watched and kept out of mischief and danger. The endless wrangles among older children must be arbitrated in some way or other, if only by cuffing the ears of both contestants; and the equally endless complaints stilled by threats, promises, whatever lies a harassed mother could invent to quiet the fretful clamor of discontented childhood. Fires must be lighted and kept going as long as needed for cooking, no matter how great the heat. Cows must be milked and cream skimmed and butter churned. Hens must be fed and eggs gathered and the filth shoveled out of henhouses. Diapers must be washed, and grimy little drawers and rompers and stiff overalls and sweaty work shirts and grease-bespattered dresses and kitchen aprons and filthy, sour-smelling towels and socks stinking with the putridity of unwashed feet and all the other articles that go to make up a farm woman's family wash. Floors must be swept and scrubbed and stoves cleaned and a never ending war waged against the constant encroaches of dust, grease, stable manure, flies, spiders, rats, mice, ants, and all the other breeders of filth that are continually at work in country households. These activities, with the occasional variation of Sunday visiting, made up the life of the women, a life that was virtually the same every day of the year, except when their help was needed in the field to set tobacco or shuck corn, or when fruit canning, hog killing, or house cleaning crowded the routine.
Late in August, when the tobacco and corn were past saving, the rains came in floods and filled up the wells and cisterns, set the creeks to running again, washed great gullies in the plowed hillsides and refreshed the thirsty pastures.
There followed a lean fall and winter. There was no corn to fatten hogs; so the tenant farmers had to get rid of what hogs they had. The hogs, being lean and forced upon the market, brought only a poor price. The stunted, half filledout nubbins that the corn fields had produced that year were all carefully saved to make into meal for household use. The hens, too, had to go; for hens are too greedy-natured to keep through a time of scarcity. Jerry bundled them into a coop and took them to Clayton and sold them for thirty-five cents apiece, all but a dozen or so which Judith insisted upon keeping "for company," as she expressed it. These scratched and ranged for a living, and kept alive, though they laid never an egg.
Jerry dug his potatoes, most of them not much bigger than marbles, a slow and disheartening task; and Judith cooked them, while they lasted, with the skins on, so that no part of them might be wasted. They were greenish and bitter; but when they were all gone they were sorely missed. The few dried beans and peas that had managed to come to fruit before the dry spell caught them were carefully pulled and shelled and stored away. Hickory nuts and black walnuts were gathered and spread out on the floor of the loft to dry. There were no blackberries that year and only a few stunted apples. Jerry searched through the woods looking for stray apple trees that had sprung up from seed, and brought home an occasional bushel or so of wormy runts. These Judith made up into apple butter which she stored away in crocks and jars.
By January all these things were gone and there was nothing left but some corn.
Work by the day was hard to get; for there were many more men than jobs, and would continue so until the spring rush came on. Jerry fretted at his forced idleness and was always on the watch for a chance to earn a day's wages. When he managed to pick up an occasional job, he bought flour for biscuits, canned salmon or a piece of bacon. Then there was a feast royal. These feasts, however, were widely scattered oases on a great desert of corn meal. This had to be eaten without milk; for there was not much food for the cow, and the small amount of milk she gave was all taken by the baby.
Judith was big with her second child. She had recovered from the sickness of early pregnancy and regained some of herold health and spirits. Grown accustomed perforce to the life made necessary by the baby, she chafed less at the monotony and restrictions of the household. But she was no longer the Judith that Jerry had married. The year and a half since the birth of the baby, which had made no noticeable change in Jerry, had left their print upon her. The youthful curves of her face and body were still there; the youthful color was in her cheeks in spite of the spare diet. But her body had lost its elasticity, her eyes their light and sparkle. The buoyancy and effervescence of youth were gone. It was as if the life spirit in the still young body had grown tired. She rarely sang any more, and was not often heard to laugh. Sometimes, in a feverish burst of gaiety, she would romp uproariously with the baby and seem for a little while like a child again. Then all at once she would let her arms fall at her sides as though suddenly tired and go about her work a little more soberly than before. Sometimes she would sit for a long time abstractedly looking out of the window at the sweep of hillside lined against the sky and take no notice that the baby was crying or tugging at her dress with his strong little fists or eating out of the dog's plate on the floor. Then she would rouse herself with a start, as though shaking something from her, and go on about her sweeping or washing or whatever she had to do.
One Saturday night in late February, the Blackford's door was flung open and Jabez Moorhouse stalked across the floor and stood warming himself by the stove. Snow was falling outside and his cloth cap and broad, stooping shoulders were powdered with white. He loosened the ragged gray woolen muffler that was knotted about his neck and beat the snow from his mittens on the side of the woodbox.
"The wind's sholy keen to-night," he said, spreading out his big hands over the grateful warmth of the stove. "It goes through clothes that hain't none too new like that much tissue paper. 'Tain't no night to be a-travelin' the roads. But I come on a special errand. I want you two and the young un to come over to my place to-morrer long about 'leven o'clock.There's a-goin' to be a s'prise party. Now I gotta be a-gittin' on, 'cause there's others I wanta bid. To-morrer 'bout 'leven, or any time in the forenoon fer that matter. The earlier the welcomer. Don't say nothin' to nobody."
He was gone, with a significant parting smile and wink; and Jerry and Judith looked at each other in astonishment. Behind him he had left an air of mystery, of wonder, and surmise.
"A s'prise party," mused Jerry. "What the devil has Uncle Jabez got to make a s'prise party with? He hain't had no work this winter."
"We'll go an' see anyway," said Judith, a glow in her cheeks. Breaking thus unexpectedly into the dull monotony of their lives, the suddenness and mystery of the invitation thrilled her with excitement.
Next morning, when they arrived at the little shanty behind the big hemlock trees, Judith was surprised to find her father and Uncle Sam Whitmarsh standing talking together just outside the kitchen door where two walls meeting at right angles formed a sheltered nook, pleasantly warmed by the midday winter sun.
"Whatyoua-doin' here, Dad?"
"I dunno yet, Judy," answered Bill. "I seem to be a-waitin."
Judith pushed open the door and stepped inside, the baby on her arm. She was greeted by a smell, an all-pervading, ineffable, intoxicating smell, the most delicious aroma that ever set a hungry mouth to watering. As she eagerly sniffed the savory odor, she felt a soft, pleasurable, almost erotic sensation tingle through her body, and her lips curved into a smile, such a smile as might have answered a lover's kiss.
"Looky here, Judy, my gal."
Jabez opened the oven door, which had lost its handle and had to be operated by means of a pair of pliers, and drew toward the front of the oven two large sizzling pans, one on the oven floor, the other above it on the grating. As she looked at these pans and sniffed the appetizing smell that steamed up from them, Judith felt once more creeping over her body the same soft, pleasurable, almost erotic sensation and her lipsfell again into that smile which might have answered a lover's kiss. In each pan was a large, upcurving mass, delicately brown, casting up a savory steam and oozing succulent juices into the rich, bubbling gravy beneath. With a big tin spoon Jabez lifted this steaming essence from the bottom of the pan and poured it over the big brown mounds. Some of it penetrated into the meat; some trickled appetizingly down the sides and back into the gravy pool.
"Is it near done, Uncle Jabez?"
There was a strained tenseness in the question.
"You damn betcha. We'll be a-lightin' into it afore ten minutes is past. The Bible says the full belly loathes the honeycomb; but to the hungry every bitter thing is sweet. So I reckon them two hind quarters'll slide daown kinder easy."
Uncle Jonah Cobb, who had been pacing up and down the floor, stopped at the arresting wordhoneyand looked disappointed when nothing further was said about it.
"They don't do good 'ithout salt," he mumbled to himself, continuing his walk.
Corn cakes were frying on the top of the stove. The big table, roughly made of unplaned pine boards, was drawn into the middle of the room; and Jabez had unearthed from somewhere a tablecloth that had once been white. It was yellowed from long lying away and much creased and crumpled. But it was a tablecloth, and as such suggestive of feasts and holidays. With a strange assortment of broken handled knives and forks and cracked and crazed plates, the table was set for eight.
The overpowering aroma, acting upon the intensity of her craving appetite, affected Judith like a drug which makes the near and real seem vague and far away. She had afterwards a dim recollection of people moving restlessly about, striding up and down the floor and asking if it was time to sit down. But she hardly realized what was going on about her until she found herself seated at the table. Silently as if they had sprung out of the earth, Uncle Jonah and Aunt Selina were found sittingopposite her. Uncle Sam Whitmarsh was at her right hand and Jerry at her left. Her father and Uncle Amos Crupper were at the other end of the table.
Jabez brought one of the big roasting pans and setting it down at his end of the table on top of a piece of pine board began to carve. It must have been that all the others seated there felt like herself; for they seemed rapt and taken out of themselves as though they were religious devotees assisting at some sacred rite. There was a tense look in every face and every eye gleamed and glittered. Judith thought she had never seen such a light in any eyes before. She had seen the light of love, of anger, of jealousy shining from people's eyes. But such expressions were weak and volatile compared with this. It was a look that expressed something more basic than anger, more enduring than love, more all-compelling than jealousy. The eyes were all fixed steadily upon one object, the roasting pan at Jabez' end of the table. The silence was tense with ravenous expectancy.
As each guest was served, he fell to eating, without waiting for the others. Those who were still waiting began to shift uneasily in their chairs, while their eyes ranged restlessly from the diminished hind quarter to the plates of their more fortunate neighbors.
At last everybody was eating and Jabez filled his own plate and fell upon the contents. A silence followed, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the click of the knives and forks. In a patch of sunlight on the floor the baby sat and played with a skunk skin that Jabez was saving to make into a cap.
"Ki-ki, ki-ki, nice ki-ki," he kept saying, as he stroked the soft fur. When a large cat walked out from behind the stove, purring and arching her back, he forsook the skin for the living animal.
A heaping plate of corn cakes was set at each end of the table, from which the guests helped themselves at their will. These, with the meat, formed the whole meal.
For a long time no voice spoke, no eye was lifted. There was nothing but the play of knives and forks, the sound ofmunching, and the constant reaching out of hands toward the corn cakes.
It was only when the second hind quarter had been carved, served, and partly eaten that the diners began to lift their eyes from their plates, lean back in their chairs, and exchange occasional remarks.
Coffee, which had been boiling on the stove in a big granite stewpan, was now served by Jabez in whatever utensils he could find. Judith got hers in a jelly glass. Aunt Selina had a granite mug, Jerry a tin cup. Uncle Jonah was honored with a large, imposing, and very substantial mustache cup ornamented with pink roses tastefully combined with pale blue true lovers' knots and bearing the legend "Father" in large gilt letters.
Down at the far end of the table, Judith glimpsed her father's familiar habit of turning a spoon over in his mouth. He liked to soak his corn cakes in coffee and eat them with a teaspoon. He put the spoon in his mouth in the usual way and invariably brought it out bottom side up.
When Jabez had served everybody else, he used the dipper to hold his own portion of coffee; and holding it aloft by the long handle, he stood up at the end of the table and rapped for attention.
"Neighbors," he began, "I wish I might give youall sumpin' better'n coffee to drink a toast in. But this here's a dry year. I never reckoned the winter'd come that I'd spend 'ithout a drop o' whiskey on the shelf. But this is that winter. The Bible says that he that tilleth the soil shall have plenty o' bread; an' anybody'd think he'd otta. But you an' me knows, none better, that he don't allus have plenty o' bread, an' still less o' meat. Another thing the Bible says is that the poor man is hated even of his own neighbor; an' I reckon there's heap more truth in that sayin' than in the other one. The earth's a mean an' stingy stepmother, an' she makes the most of her stepchillun pretty mean an' stingy too. A hard life makes 'em hard an' close an' suspicious of each other. They cheat an' they git cheated, an' oftener'n not they hate theirneighbors. But if a hard life breeds hates, it breeds likin's too; an' it's because youall is folks that I'm praoud to call my friends, that I ast you to come here to-day. Friends, let's drink a toast to the health of our landlord an' neighbor, Uncle Ezry Pettit. This here is his treat."
A perceptible tremor went around the table. Everybody started slightly and looked half apprehensively at everybody else to see how they took it; then at the door as if Uncle Ezra might be expected to appear there at any moment and claim his property. Uncle Sam Whitmarsh chuckled into his tin mug. Uncle Amos Crupper held his cup poised half way between the table and his lips, deliberate, thoughtful, turning it over in his mind. Judith, glancing sidewise at Jerry, saw a look of shock pass across his face and felt a disturbing aura of disapproval suddenly surround him. But he went on eating.
"Haow did yuh come to git away with her, Jabez?"
It was her father asking the question. He tried to make his voice sound off-handed, but it had a strained, unnatural sound.
"Waal, Bill, it was this way. Friday evenin' on towards night I was a-comin' home raound by the back of Uncle Ezry's old terbaccer barn; an' there she stud caught in the wire fence. I was jes' fixin' to pull her aout, when it come over me all of a sudden haow good she'd eat. After that idear'd took a holt of me, I jes didn't hev the heart to turn her loose. I tuk a good look all raound, an' there wa'n't a soul to be seen on hill ner holler. It come into my mind haow Abraham when he wanted sumpin to offer up to the Lord fer a burnt offerin', faound a ram caught in the thicket. An' I ses to myse'f a wire fence was jes as good as a thicket any day fer ketchin' sech critters, an' mos' likely I needed the ewe more'n Abraham did the ram. So I jes hit her a whack atween the eyes with the hammer I was a-carryin'. She dropped like a sack o' meal, an' I drug her into the brush. Come dark night I went an' fetched her; an' here she is. She was a fat ewe."
"She was that," assented Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, wiping the grease from his mouth with his pocket handkerchief.
"Waal, I reckon Uncle Ezry won't die in the county housefer lack of her," opined Bill in the tone of one who has justified himself to his conscience. "Gawd, there hain't nothin' like a good meal o' meat to make a feller feel like a man agin. I didn't have no idear I was that meat hungry till I smelt her a-roastin'. Then wild hosses wouldn't 'a' helt me back. It sholy feels good to have yer belly well lined."
Bill sighed, stretched out his long legs luxuriously, and reached into his pocket for a chew of tobacco. The other men pushed back their chairs and also sought their pockets. Aunt Selina brought out her corn cob pipe from the pocket of her patched skirt and filled it with swift, practised movements of her small fingers. Having done so she approached Judith and sitting down beside her plied her with questions about herself and the baby.
All the time the old woman's bright, youthful brown eyes sought Judith's face, as though trying to bridge the gulf of years.
From a child, Judith had been fond of Aunt Selina. There was something about her alert, birdlike, patched little person, so frail and skinny, yet so full of a certain humming, quick pulsating life that drew all children to her, as like is drawn to like. For Aunt Selina, in spite of her years, her corn cob pipe and her ability to spit like a man, was still more than half a child. Judith's early liking for her had persisted through the years; but to-day the old woman seemed a more than usually attractive person. Judith answered all her questions with great animation. She told all about the trouble the baby had had cutting his teeth. She was enthusiastic over plans for raising a big flock of chickens in the spring; and she discussed exhaustively the relative merits of stripes, checks, sprays, spots, and all over patterns in dress goods.
She scarcely knew what she was saying and could remember almost nothing of it afterward. She only knew that she felt warm, strong, happy, full of life and vigor, alive with interest in everything. She seemed to be surrounded by a rosy mist through which things appeared vague and somewhat removed but replete with infinite possibilities for joy and achievement.A small amount of alcohol would have had a similar effect. She was meat drunk. It was the second time in her life that she had tasted mutton.
The others seemed to be affected in much the same way. From about the stove where the men had collected came the sound of animated talk and of bold, assured, unrestrained laughter, such talk and laughter as were rarely heard in a tenant farmer's house except when whiskey was one of the guests. The language, however, out of deference to the two women present, was somewhat restrained and guarded.
"Mebbe you'll call to mind, Amos," Uncle Sam Whitmarsh was saying, "the day we helped tote Uncle Ezry's bar'l o' whiskey daown into his cellar. I reckon it's a good thirty-five year past; but it seems on'y like yestiddy to me. My haow time goes. There was you an' me, an' there was Ned Tyler that left here an' went over into Indianny an' there was Abner Sykes that's dead an' buried this thirty year. You mind that day, Amos?"
"Yaas, I mind that day, Sam; an' I mind well the heft o' that bar'l o' whiskey." Uncle Amos smiled reminiscently. "We was young men them days, Sam."
"Yaas, we was young, an' Ezry was young, an' he drunk a heap o' whiskey in them days afore he got so old he couldn't hold it no more. It was terbaccer harvest an' we was all there a-helpin' to cut. The bar'l come that mornin'. After dinner Ezry ses: 'Boys,' ses he, 'I wish you'd gimme a hand with this here bar'l afore you go back to field.'
"There stud the bar'l as big as a maounting; an' there stud the cellar steps, steep an' narrer. Ezry never so much as laid hand to it; he jes stud there an' told us what he wanted did. Waal, we four took a holt o' that there bar'l an' we tugged an' pulled an' wrestled an' strained an' sweat till we got her daown them steep narrer stairs. Then Ezry wa'n't satisfied with that; but he had to hev it put way back into the fur corner where it was dark an' cool. After we'd got her there an' blocks set under her to hold her level an' everything all shipshape,Ezry ses: 'Thanks, boys, you kin go naow.' An' we all troops back up the cellar stairs as dry as we come. I kin see the look on Abner Sykes' face to this day. He's dead an' gone, but that look is a-livin' yet. Yaas, he's got a close fist, has Ezry."
Judith, who had heard this story more than once before, felt herself dropping to sleep again and again. She would catch herself napping, straighten up with a sudden start and open her eyes very wide, only to fall into another doze. The sound of a snore roused her from one of these naps, and looking in the direction from which it had come, she saw that Uncle Jonah, sunk into the depths of an old rocking chair, had fallen fast asleep with his chin resting on his breast. The air in the room was close and heavy with Sunday afternoon dullness. Her eyelids kept falling over her eyes of their own weight. She longed with an intense physical craving to throw herself down somewhere—anywhere—and sleep, sleep, sleep.
Gradually the men stopped talking and lost interest in what their companions were saying. More and more they sagged in their chairs, their legs stretched out lazily toward the stove. Chins dropped, and the sound of muffled, fragmentary voices grew faint and far away. At length even these ceased, and only an occasional faint snore stirred the silence.
Judith was aroused by Jerry gently shaking her shoulder.
"Judy, Judy, it's near night an' time we was home. The baby's awake an' cryin'."
She roused herself with an effort and fetched the baby from the inner room where she had laid him on Jabez's bed. The others were all preparing to go, except Uncle Jonah and Aunt Selina, who still slept on peacefully.
"Leave 'em take their rest," said Jabez. "They hain't got nothin' to go home for."
As they were driving home, Jerry suddenly broke the silence.
"Uncle Jabez hadn't oughter of stole that ewe. I'm sorry I et any."
"But you kep' on a-eatin' after you knowed she was stole."
"Well, God damn it all, Judy, I was hungry."
"So was we all. So was Jabez when he knocked her in the head."
Her voice had a dry and final sound.
Jerry could find no words with which to express the complexity of his feelings. So he kept silence. From time to time he glanced sidewise at his wife with a look of uneasiness and mistrust. She gave him never a look, but sat staring straight in front of her over the baby's head. His mind stirred uneasily with a baffled, futile feeling, very disquieting to his male vanity, that she did not think it worth her while to discuss the matter with him. An intangible film which, ever since the Georgetown Court Day had been spreading itself between them, seemed to grow momently denser and more permanent in quality.
It seemed that winter as if the spring would never come, as if there would never be an end to the arid routine of corn meal mush and coffee for breakfast, corn meal cakes and coffee for dinner, and coffee and corn meal cakes for supper. March dragged its weary length into what seemed more like a year than a month. February had been full of mild, springlike days, days of strengthening sun and greening grass that had cheered the hungry tenant farmers into hopes of an early spring. But March closed down grim and inexorable. Bitter winds blew all day under a cold, gray sky, a dead, frozen sky, all one blank, even tone of pale gray, dreary and disheartening. They dried up the tender grass that had been springing in sheltered places. They whirled the fine dust of dried clay about the barns and houses. They pierced like knife blades through worn-out underwear and sleazy cotton dresses and threadbare jackets and made the doing of barnyard chores a shrinking misery.
There were not many chores. Judith had only her cow to milk and care for and her hens to feed. Often, however, she had wood to chop; for Jerry was busy now with the spring plowing and was not so attentive to the woodpile as he had been during their first year together. When she had finished these chores, she fled back into the house as a woodchuck scuttled to the protection of his hole. The bitter, dust-laden wind seemed to suck the moisture from her skin and from her very bones. She felt as bleak, dry, desolate, and soulless as the landscape. Looking out of the little window at the bare garden patch where she had planted a few onion sets and some seed of lettuce and radishes, and which as yet showed no hint of green, she felt dismal, hungry, and hopeless.
During these last weeks of the winter, she grew daily paler and more listless. It was time for the baby to be born, andshe was heavy with a great lethargy, as if the life within her, in its determination to persist, were slowly and steadily draining her, leaving her body nothing but a shell, a limp, nerveless, irritable, collapsing shell.
She understood now why snakes and woodchucks crawled into their holes in winter. She wished she had a hole to crawl into, a hole where there were no meals to cook, no fire to keep going, no fretful child to pacify—a nice, dark, quiet hole where nobody ever came and where she could curl up and be at peace.
Little Billy was a strong, stirring, loud-voiced, and self-willed child. Often when his clamorous demands became too much for her nerves, she would slap him savagely and force him to blubber into silence, gasping and choking and catching spasmodically at the heaving surges of breath that rose in him like tidal waves. He learned to be afraid of her in these moods and would sidle away and hide under the bed or behind the stove till the storm had passed, peering out at her with scared, watchful eyes, as a puppy watches the foot that has just kicked him. In such moments she hated them both, the born and the unborn, two little greedy vampires working on her incessantly, the one from without, the other from within, never giving her a moment's peace, bent upon drinking her last drop of blood, tearing out her last shrieking nerve.
Sometimes she would give way to one of these fits of irritation when Jerry was in the house; and he would rush to intervene and save the child.
"Why do you act so mean to the young un, Judy?" he would demand, his voice harsh with anger.
"Mebbe you'd act mean too if you was shet up with him all day long, like you was in a jail."
Her mouth set into hard lines, and her level brows contracted darkly.
When she said such things he always looked at her in a puzzled, hurt, and somewhat impatient way.
She no longer looked forward to Jerry's homecoming at night. When he came in from the day's plowing, tired butstill ruddy and vigorous in spite of his diet of corn meal, she felt more dragged out and irritable than ever. Out of her own weakness and nervelessness she grew to hate his ability to relax, his aura of excess vitality, that strong, male vitality of which she was becoming the victim. After a day at the plow he could still whistle and sing, fling the baby to the ceiling or ride him on his back about the kitchen. His thoughtless, boyish good humor made her feel hard, bitter, and morose.
While he took his ease in the evenings, she went about the kitchen silently, fried the corn cakes, and made the coffee, washed the grime from the baby's hands and face, and fed his milk and corn cake. After they had eaten, she would wash the dishes and undress the baby and put him to bed. Then she would come back and sit by the little lamp darning socks or mending rompers or putting great, coarse patches on the knees of overalls.
Sometimes Jerry, looking at her under the light of the lamp and noting the tense, drawn look on her pale features, would fume within himself with impotent rage. He blamed it all on the lack of proper food. Things were in a hell of a mess, he told himself, when a man could work from sun-up to sundown and not be able to give his wife even the food she needed. He felt himself burning with a fierce anger against the order of things which prevented him from giving her anything she could ask for. He wanted to be the source of all good things for her and for her children; and here he was scarcely able to keep the breath in her body. It never for a moment occurred to him that she could ever want anything which he could not supply if he were only given a decent chance. Yes, he was placed in a nice hell of a hole, he told himself. But of course this was one year in a hundred. His corklike optimism reasserted itself. Everything would be all right as soon as the new crop came on.
In bed he would put his arm over her protectingly.
"Things'll be a heap better, Judy, soon's garden truck begins to grow."
And she would sigh lightly, glad of the comfort of the bedand his warm, muscular arm, and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
It was on one of these bleak, windswept March days that the second baby was born, a surprisingly fat and healthy little boy, whom they named Andrew after Jerry's father. His health and vigor, however, had been obtained at the expense of his mother. For days after his birth she lay half unconscious, scarcely moving a finger, hardly lifting an eyelash.
"The girl must have nourishment," said Dr. MacTaggert. "Milk."
So Jerry scurried around and found where he could get a half gallon of milk a day without immediate payment; and at once she began to revive. He slaughtered one of the precious hens; Luella, who had come to take charge, made chicken broth which Judith sipped while the rest of the family gorged ravenously on the meat. The neighbors came bringing out of their great scarcity little delicacies for which in many cases their own mouths were watering: a pot of peach jam or a little jar of apple butter or a few new laid eggs. Aunt Selina brought a block of honey in the comb; and Jabez came carrying the first young onions and the first tender leaves of lettuce which he had grown under a window sash in a sheltered spot against his kitchen wall. To Judith, now rapidly growing stronger, these bits of green tasted better than anything else. Such succulence and flavor in the young onions! She had known every spring what it was to be hungry for green things; but young onions had never tasted so delicious before.
After the first half conscious days of exhaustion, she began to enjoy her convalescence. The strained tension of the long winter months was gone and already almost forgotten, and it was good to stretch luxuriously in bed and give way to the weakness which ignores all cares and responsibilities. Aunt Mary had taken little Billy over to stay with her. Luella was full of quiet competence. The new baby slept most of the time, and the house was still and orderly. Sunk in the utter relaxation that follows upon childbirth, she felt at first thatthere could be nothing more delicious than to lie motionless on her back and look lazily through the window at the slope of hillside, listen to the song of the returning birds, the cheerful cackle of the hens, the barking of the dog, and the subdued sounds made by Luella as she moved about quietly and adequately in the kitchen.
Soon, however, she grew restless with returning vitality and was glad to sit propped up with pillows and mend little Billy's clothes or sew on a dress for the new baby.
Sometimes she would ask Luella to bring her a pencil and a piece of paper; and using a pine shingle for a drawing board, she would amuse herself by sketching faces, some human, some animal, some half and half, as she had used to do when she was a little girl at school. Luella, looking over her shoulder, was scandalized.
"Whydo you draw sech ugly things, Judy? It's a shame, when you kin draw so good, you don't draw sumpin purty an' nice. I wisht you'd draw me a nice pitcher in colors fer to hang on my wall."
"All right. There's some in the cupboard drawer, that Jerry bought for Billy to mark with."
Luella brought more paper and a handful of colored crayons; and Judith, not much interested, but rather curious to see how it would turn out, drew a picture in colors: A little house, a bit of rail fence, an apple tree in blossom, a hill rising steeply behind. Then she took another sheet and drew a large bunch of pink roses. Luella was delighted with the pictures, especially the roses.
"My, haow kin you draw 'em so good, Judy! Naow that's what I call nice work. I'm a-goin' to put frames on 'em an' hang 'em in my room."
Luella carried away the pictures in triumph, and Judith went on drawing her heads.
In a few weeks there was an abundance of garden "sass." The season was as bountiful as the year before it had been stingy. It rained and the sun shone hotly and the seeds in Scott County's fertile clay soil stirred, reached up their headsto their God, like millions of little sunworshipers and covered the earth with green.
Weeds grew too, tender and succulent from abundant moisture and rapid growth. They were easy to get rid of if they were attacked in time. One stroke of the hoe killed hundreds of them. Lying on the moist, steaming earth in the fierce heat of the sun, they shriveled and dried up in a few hours. But if they were allowed to live, they grew with incredible rapidity into great, tough giants and overtopped the vegetables in no time.
Judith spent all the time that she could spare from the babies and the house working in her garden, chopping out the weeds while they were still young and tender, hilling up the potatoes, hoeing the rows of lusty beets and beans and turnips, training the pole beans to climb on their poles and tying up the tomato vines to stakes. She liked this work. She liked the feel of the hot sun on her back and shoulders, the smell of the damp, warm earth. Some magic healing qualities in sun and earth seemed to give her back health, vigor, and poise. When she had hoed in the garden for an hour or two, she felt tired from her exertions, for her strength had only partly returned after the birth of the baby. Yet, in spite of the ache in her muscles, she was refreshed and in a way invigorated, more able to cope with the washtub and the churn, with the baby when he cried and refused to be pacified and with little Billy when he danced up and down and choked and grew purple in the face with rage.
It was a hard spring and summer for Jerry. He had put in five acres of tobacco; and this year there was no help to be had from Judith. Even if she could have left the children, she was much too weak for field work. So Jerry had to tackle it alone. Five acres of tobacco and ten acres of corn—a good full summer's work for three men, four if they worked union hours. But Jerry did not work union hours. He was determined that this year he was going to provide for his wife and family. The alarm clock was set every morning except Sunday for half past three. By half past four, he and the horses were jingling out of the barnyard. At eleven he came homefor dinner; and noon saw him starting away again. That was the hardest wrench of all, to get up after eating and drag his swollen feet and aching muscles out into the hot noonday sun, before him the long broiling afternoon of endless plodding after the plow. It was not so bad after he had been working for an hour or so; he got his second wind and went along tolerably enough. Five o'clock came—quitting time for those who work for others; but it was only a little past the middle of Jerry's afternoon. Six o'clock, and the sun was still quite high in the sky. It was only when the sun dropped below the horizon that he clicked cheerfully to the horses and turned their heads toward home.
It was hard, too, on the horses. They grew gaunt and stringy-necked, their coats bleached by the sun into a dead, lusterless drab. Better, however, that they were thin; for then there was small danger of their dropping dead of the heat, as a fat horse might do. Jerry was a little sorry that he had not bought mules. They stood the strain of heat and hard work better than horses.
In the evening, after he had eaten supper, he rolled into bed in the same shirt that he had worn all day, or if it was very hot in no shirt at all. He was dirty, sweaty, unshaven. Tired in every muscle he fell asleep instantly. Judith had nothing to fear from his excess vitality. She, too, slept the sleep of exhaustion.
The weeds grew with such lustiness and vigor that Jerry had to cultivate his corn and tobacco again and again to keep the plants from being smothered. As soon as one generation was laid low another came to take its place. The earth teemed with the seed of this useless but vigorous and persistent life. By early July, however, Jerry saw the reward of his toil. By then the tobacco had spread its broad leaves and shaded the ground, and the corn had shot up thick and tall and dark green. When it had reached this stage, his crop needed no more cultivation. The weeds might continue to germinate all they liked; they could not grow if they did not see the sun. He took an occasional day off now and an extra hour or so atnoon to loaf and play with Billy. If a neighbor happened by, he was willing to stop and chat with him. His vigor and good spirits began to return.
"Bejasus, I've got a good crop this year, Judy," he said, his face beaming with honest, simple satisfaction. "The corn's made. Nothin' can't hurt it. It's same as if it was in the crib. Of course a dozen things cud happen to that there terbaccer yet; but not likely. Everybody says terbaccer's a-goin' high this year. If I kin steer her safe to market, she'll bring us a neat little penny."
On Sundays they usually hooked up and went visiting. Often they went to Lizzie May's for the sake of Billy, who liked to have other children to play with. Jerry and Dan, too, were good friends and enjoyed an all day chat. Lizzie May had two children now: Granville, a year or so older than Billy, a stodgy, round-faced chunk of a child, and Viola, a little girl with yellow curls, her mother in miniature. Motherhood had improved Lizzie May. She had taken on flesh and seemed to have discovered some source of strength and vitality inaccessible to Judith. She beamed with maternal pride and satisfaction on her children. She kept their clothes and her own dresses and aprons washed and starched and fastidiously ironed; and she was always busy scrubbing, dusting, polishing, never tiring apparently of the endless cleaning of things just to have them get dirty again, a species of well doing of which Judith constantly experienced weariness. Her stove was always polished, her kettle shining, her floor scrubbed, her children clean and decent and neatly patched.
In addition to all this, Lizzie May had a "front room," an apartment rarely found in the houses of tenant farmers. It had a bright rag carpet on the floor made of rags all sewn by Lizzie May's own hands. Braided rag rugs were laid over the carpet in places where the wear might come if the room were ever used. There were lace curtains at the window, a bed with a white spread and pillow shams embroidered in red, a little what-not in a corner loaded with knick-knacks, two crayon enlargements on the wall, and a framed motto over thedoor. In this room the blinds were always drawn and sunlight entered only through chinks. It smelled of new rag carpet and freshly starched pillow shams and a slight mustiness, sweetish, and not altogether unpleasant. It had an air of cool, clean, quiet sanctity. After the children it was Lizzie May's greatest pride.
Judith often wondered why it was that Lizzie May got on so much better than herself. It was not hard to see why she was a better housekeeper. She had always liked housework and taken an interest in it. Besides, she did nothing else, never even venturing as far as the barnyard. Dan did all the outside chores and when he needed help in the field he called on one of his younger brothers.
But she was a better wife, too, for just what reason Judith did not know, though she was beginning to have vague thoughts on the subject. There appeared to be between her and Dan a settled, comfortable intimacy based on as perfect an understanding as can exist between a man and a woman. She bullied and nagged him a good deal about various things: his habits of drinking and fox hunting, his muddy shoes, his carelessness of her company table cloth. But she did not mean a great deal by the scoldings and he took them complacently. He on his side, though decidedly selfish in personal matters like most husbands, adored his family and considered his wife the sum of all perfections. Judith was quite sure that Jerry no longer regarded herself as perfect. What was worse, she felt her feelings gradually numbing into a growing indifference toward him. She saw quite clearly that Lizzie May and Dan got on much better than she and Jerry.
As a mother, too, Lizzie May was better than she. She hardly ever slapped her children or fell into a rage with them. They did not seem to annoy her. Why was this, Judith asked herself uneasily. She thought she loved her children quite as much as Lizzie May loved hers. Perhaps she did; but then quite possibly she did not. What was the matter with herself that she should be a failure? She began to brood and look into herself.
There was not the least doubt that she was a failure. It did not need comparison with Lizzie May to convince her of this. When she thought about it, as she did increasingly long and often, she faced the fact quite calmly and almost coldly, as she was in the habit of facing facts. She had always disliked housework. Now she loathed it as the galley slave loathes the oar. She let things slide as much as she could. The floor remained unscrubbed and the stove unpolished. Fluff collected in feathery rolls under the beds, and layer after layer of greasy smut formed on the outsides of the pots and pans. In the dark corners of the cupboard mice made nests of torn up bits of paper and rag and left little mounds of corn hulls and little black oblongs to show where they had feasted. When she opened the cupboard door, a stale and pungent smell testified to their presence. Dust collected on the shelves, cobwebs in the corners, and bedbugs in the beds.
Once in a while when the house got too distressingly dirty, she would have a grand clean up. She would spend two or three febrile days going into everything, cleaning the cupboards, sweeping down the walls, taking the beds apart, and soaking them with kerosene, washing the windows, polishing the stove. At such times her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with excitement. When it was all done she would sink back, tired but happy, and register a determination to keep things looked after in future so that such a thorough going over would never again be necessary.
It seemed to her that she was an even greater failure with the children. She cared more for them than for anything else in her life, she felt quite sure of that. She was consumed with anxiety lest they should fall sick. In summer she cooled and strained the milk with the greatest care, fearful of dysentery; and in winter she was anxiously mindful of draughts and chills, worried as to whether the babies were warmly enough dressed and constantly on the watch for the first signs of the much dreaded colds so common in all the leaky, draughty shanties during the winter season.
Nevertheless, in spite of her anxiety about the health andcomfort of the children, she felt more and more that she begrudged them something. She did not serve them wholeheartedly, devotedly, joyfully, like Lizzie May. She wearied of the constant putting on and pulling off of little garments. More and more she chafed against the never relaxing strain of being always in bondage to them, always a victim of their infantile caprices, always at their beck and call seven days a week through weeks that were always the same.
They were so imperious, so rigorously demanding in the supreme confidence of their complete power over her. They were so clinchingly sure of their ascendancy. They gripped her with hooks stronger than the finest steel. If only she could have been a willing victim, like Lizzie May. But she could not. She strained away, and the hooks bit into her shuddering flesh, unalterably firm, enduring, and invincible. She knew that they would never let her go.
She found herself longing ardently for a single day, even a single hour when she could be by herself, quite alone and free to do as she chose.
At first when this wish formed itself in her mind the nostalgia of the fields and roads took possession of her. She imagined herself taking a long, carefree ride on horseback or following a turkey hen over the hills and hollows; and having found the hidden nest, coming back leisurely, aimlessly, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and the touch of the wind on her face, feeling herself, as she had used to do, a part of the out of doors, untroubled by thoughts and happy that she was alive. Later on, in the winter, when the strain of her captivity dragged more and more wearyingly on exhausted nerves, she forgot the old nostalgia, forgot even to look out of the window, and longed for only one thing: quiet and peace—peace and deep, long sleep.
Summer months go quickly by. The summer and early fall were soon gone, and the long season of cold and rain set in. The tobacco was a heavy crop. It had been cut and hung in the barn, had survived the moist, warm spells that so often cause tobacco to heat and spoil, and was ready to be bulked. For this it was necessary to wait for right weather conditions. Jerry was impatient and every morning and evening he scanned the sky anxiously.
One morning in early November when he went out to draw a bucket of water, a soft, mild wind was blowing from the south under heavy clouds. It was not raining, but the air was full of moisture. He sniffed critically.
When he got back into the house, he set the bucket down with a hasty thump that splashed some of the water out onto the floor.
"I'll be off, Judy, as quick as I git sumpin to eat. It's fine bulkin' weather. I think the terbaccer'll be nice an' soft. An' you'd best put me up a lunch so's I won't hev to quit work long at noon."
For several days, whenever the weather conditions were right, Jerry worked at bulking the tobacco. At last it was done and the long job of stripping began.
Judith had to help with the stripping, or it would never be finished in time to get the tobacco to market while the price held. The price had a disconcerting way of dropping when the great bulk of tobacco began to come on the market.
Through the short gray days of late November and December the alarm clock was set for four. Bed was never so seductively delicious as during the few moments after its impertinent ting-a-ling had startled them awake. They curled together luxuriously in the warmth and softness. It was Jerry who had the strength of mind first to throw off the covers and bound out into the icy blackness. As he hurriedly pokedkindlings into the cold stove, he cheered himself by singing, to the accompaniment of chattering teeth, a little song that he had heard somewhere and into which he had fitted his own name: