Between the Flowers: A Novel

  Katy looked at Delph in a troubled wondering way, the same speculative wonder in her glance that had haunted Delph all through her wedding day. Their eyes met; Katy smiled an embarrassed, worried sort of smile and bent hastily to her writing. Her pen

  Page 121

  scratched busily for a time, but soon she must stop to ponder and twist a curl around her finger.

  While she pondered, Angus came in; his wide shoulders were heavily powdered with snow, and there was more snow on his feet, but Angus, usually so slow and careful in all things, walked hastily toward Dorie with no pausing to clean his feet. He glanced uncertainly about the room, and seemed of half a mind to speak with Dorie, but Katy would not give him time. "I need a fresh audience," she said, and began to read rapidly, "'Salem news this week is mostly weather. We are having our first real fall of snow, unusually heavy for the time of year.

  "'However, Mrs. Dorie Dodson Fairchild did not let the weather keep her tobacco from the market. Her son Robert Jonathon'Mama, reckin they'll know that's Poke Easy?'home from Lexington for Christmas vacation, left with Mr. Marshal Gregory and the tobacco on Monday of this week.'"

  Angus opened his mouth, but Katy lifted her hand for silence and continued, "'Ray Higginbottom, fourteen year old son of Perce Higginbottom of Cedar Stump, reports that his 4-H Club Project white leghorn pullets broke th' county record for layers last week.'I hope he was tellin' th' truth an' not just braggin'."

  Angus shifted his feet and looked at Dorie. "Miz Dorie."

  "'Brother Eli Fitzgerald conducted services at Salem Church on Sunday of this week. His text was: "But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?" Judges 9:11.'"

  "Miz Dorie."

  "'Mrs. Elliot, wife of Mr. Elliot who lives'don't you think I ought to make it 'resides' for strange people like th' Elliots?'in the old Weaver house on the Hawthorne Road.'"

  Angus turned abruptly toward Katy as if he had maybe lost heart to speak with Dorie. "Katy, if you keep on a readin'whywhy pretty soon you can say, 'Prissy she's had her calf,'" he finished all in a breath, and lowered his white lashed eyes and would not look at Dorie.

  Dorie sat for a second with one needle sliding from her knitting, and her lower jaw dropped. She came to sudden violent life, threw her knitting to the floor, sprang up and rushed hatless and coatless

  Page 122

  out into the snow, crying, "Lord, Lord, it's a month before her time, an' Prissy my prize heifer."

  Katy took her mother's hat and jumper from their nail behind the stove, and started with them to the barn. "Prissy'ull die or be ruined for life maybe, an' I guess th' little calf's already dead, an' Mama she'll have her stomach all upset," she said, and went away with a soundless sobbing, while Angus fidgeted by the stove and had the look of a man ready to be hanged.

  Delph could think of nothing to do, but felt the situation demanded something. She built up the fire, filled the tea kettle and set it to boil. Katy was back in a moment, bursting into the kitchen, her hair white with snow, and Black Peter, Brown Bertha, and Caesar, cowed by a scolding from Dorie, racing at her heels. "Mama drove me away," she breathlessly explained. "An' Angus, she said for you to get down there quick. She said Prissy was a havin' it mighty bad."

  "Prissy was a good way along, an' any cow has a hard time," Angus said in words even slower than common, and gave no indication of returning to the barn.

  Katy flipped snow from her hair, and pulled on his arm. "I'm tellin' you, you'd better go. Mama's gettin' worse off than Prissy."

  "To my mind she's goin' to be worser later on," Angus prophesied, and went slowly away. Katy's tears came as easily as her laughter. She sat now on the wood box and cried with Black Peter and Brown Bertha sitting with their heads on her knees and young Caesar chewing the laces in her shoes. "This'ull be th' death a Mama," she sobbed. "She's planned it all so long; how she'd breed an' raise some Jerseys subject to register, an' now she's waited all this while for a pure blooded calf of Solomon's breedin', an' now most likely it'll be dead.'' Dorie, too flustered to notice she had worn her comfort shoes out into the mud and snow, returned, scolded Katy for crying, and rolled a cigarette but was too excited to smoke it. She sat and waved the crooked cigarette and talked to the top of the stove. "I wish to th' Lord Marsh or Poke Easy was here. I never was any good at a time like this. Angus is what worries me so. He's handled many a calvin' an' foalin' but I never saw him worried like he is now.I wish to God there was a vetinarian in this end a th' county. There ought to be a law havin' a county health for animals

  Page 123

  same as for humans. I wish I had Brother Eli or Az, but Brother's got no telephone, an' th' Cumberland's too high for Az."

  Katy dried her easy tears, and studied her mother. "What about, Dr. Andy: he brought all of us. Maybe he'd bring Prissy's calf."

  Dorie shook her head. "Dr. Andy 'ud never come out in this weather for a cow. Anyhow it would maybe insult him to ask him."

  "You've insulted plenty a people in your day. One more wouldn't matter."

  "He'd never come for a cownot even Prissy."

  "He wouldn't have to know."

  Dorie got up and started to the barn. "I'm too much respected in this neighborhood to start tellin' lies at my age."

  When her mother had gone, Katy smoothed the brown spots above Brown Bertha's eyes. "Nobody respects memuch. I'm young enough to live over it," she said to the dog, and got up and went to the telephone in the hall.

  Delph and the dogs followed her, and watched as she took the receiver from the wall and began an immediate calling in a high excited voice, "MattieOh, Mattie, give me Dr. Andymake it quickmighty quick.Never mind what's th' matter with her, get me Dr. Andy's house."

  A moment's silence with Katy rolling her eyes at Delph, then calling again in a voice shrill with terror, "Dr. Andy, oh, Dr. Andy, is that you, Dr. Andy. This is KatyDorie Dodson Fairchild's Katy. Please come quick. Mama's afraid she's dyin. She's scared to death. Come mighty quick, or you'll be too late."

  The telephone sounded with gruff excited questions, but Katy slammed the receiver and turned to Delph. "That'll bring him. He thinks th' world an' all a Mama, an' once he's here he'll do what he can for Prissy."

  There was nothing to do but wait restlessly in the kitchen, and look toward the barnyard for signs of what might be happening there. Delph, to whom the pretty slender-legged Prissy was just another cow, thought mostly of Marsh. She would liked to have gone upstairs and hunted something of his she might have overlooked in the spell of mending his things she had taken while he was away, but since the rest of the household took the matter of Prissy in such tragic fashion, she feared she might be thought lacking in sympathy should she leave the kitchen.

  Page 124

  Angus came again and stood cracking his knuckles by the stove. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and his naturally pale eyes seemed paler yet. Katy, cheered by the prospect of Dr. Andy, began the business of comforting Angus. ''Prissy's not dead an' there's still hope, mebbe th' calf will come all right. Do you reckin Solomon knows he's gettin' a son?"

  Angus twisted his hat. "I ain't a sayin' what Solomon knows, but to my mind Prissy an' her calf'ull both live."

  "Well, I wouldn't be scared to death. Th'way you act is one thing that's worryin' Mama so."

  "II can't help it. Prissyshe seems uncommon quick with th' business so I comeI come away. I didn't want to be on hand."

  The door was flung violently open as if by a whirlwind. Angus shivered and looked at his shoes. Delph looked at Dorie and retreated to a corner. The dogs sprang forward to greet their mistress, paused in mid-charge to study her with troubled eyes, then all, including the pup Caesar, walked with lowered tails behind the stove. Katy sat on the wood box and hugged her knees and bowed her head and looked at her mother from the tops of her eyes. Dorie, however, had thought for none but Angus who looked at Dorie and backed away. "Icouldn't help it, Ma'am. Th' fenc
e in that back field next to Riley Sexton's scrub bull, it wasn't any good. He broke in one dayI saw him an' run like fightin' fire, but Prissy she was more than willin' an' beat me to him; an' it just a month before you'd told me to let her to Solomon."

  Dorie found her tongue and poured out her anger and surprise and disgust in shrill breathless speech. "Th' calf comes, not dead but a kickin', an' I look an' I wait, an' I look again. Prissy starts lickin' it dry, an' it tries to teeter to its feet, an' I look an' I think th' lights all wrong, for I'm seein' spots where there's no spots to see. I look again. I go up close, an' what do I see, what do I see, but a knock kneed, pot-bellied, little scrub bull, spotted, an' no more kin a Solomon's than I am.Oh, Angusyou, youyou could ha told me."

  Angus retreated another step before her wrathful eyes and gesticulating hand. "II hadn't th' heart, Ma'am. Thought it was, well, kinder to let you keep a thinkin'Poke EasyheI told him last summer, an' he said you'dyou'd have more fun waitin' for a scrub

  Page 125

  bull an' thinkin' it was a pure bred than you'd ever have out a havin' a pure bredso I thought it was kinder."

  "Kinder? Poke Easy, he could ha?" Dorie's comment on Poke Easy was never finished. The ringing of the telephone and a second later the sonorous clanking of the brass knocker on the front hall door followed almost immediately by the savage barking and leaping of the dogs from behind the stove, caused Dorie to think of the tobacco. "Go see who's wantin', Katy, an' I'll get th' telephone. It's most likely Poke Easy callin' from Hawthorne Town to say that th' bottom dropped out a th' market just as they put my tobacco up for sale."

  Katy arose, smoothed her dress, ran her fingers through her hair by way of combing it and went to the door. Delph remained with Angus and with him exchanged a sigh of thankfulness at the interruption. Their relief, however, was almost immediately shattered by Dorie's heated conversation with the telephone. "Who's dyin'? Me sick? I never felt stronger in my life. You heard it in Burdine? Brother Eli told you? I've not seen Brother Eli since th' weddin' He said Mattie Smiley told him? I tell you there's nothin' wrong."

  The receiver banged, and there was a moment's quiet during which Katy could be heard in her best Sunday School manner. "Come right in, Dr. Andy, you an' Brother Eli. Th' side parlor's had a fire but it's about out now. I'll build it up." And Katy came flying kitchenwards, taking no time to answer the two men's single question of "How's your mother?"

  Katy remained in the kitchen with Delph, leaving the explanations to Dorie who began and ended the matter with a few remarks of apology for Katy's scatterbrained ways, and then turned to with a spirited account of the weaknesses of Prissy and Angus. Between relief at finding no sickness at Fairchild Place and sympathy for Dorie, neither of the old men had any scolding word for Katy; Brother Eli even going so far as to praise her sympathetic, tenderhearted ways with animals. He went with Angus to look at the calf, and returned filled with comforting words. The calf showed that Prissy was a very fine cow indeed. The good Jersey blood showed stronger than Riley Sexton's scrub bull; and it was neither scrub nor bull, but a pretty little heifer that would grow into a fine all purpose type cow.

  Page 126

  Dr. Andy, a dried up little man with a leathery wrinkled face, his cheeks grooved by the bedside smile he had worn for more than forty years, prescribed hot toddies all around, himself included, and not forgetting Angus at the barn.

  Delph sipped her toddy, and felt sinful, taking whiskey in the middle of the afternoon when nothing ailed. She listened absent-mindedly to the attempts of the callers to comfort Dorie, but sat with her ears pricked for the telephone. Poke Easy might call about the tobacco, and she could get to speak a word with Marsh. Each time it rang she listened expectantly to Katy's answers, but always it was only some of the neighbors. Those who had not actually seen Dr. Andy and Brother Eli go rushing up to Fairchild Place, had heard from their neighbors that Dorie was dying, or Katy was in a bad way, or that that runaway bride was taken suddenly sick. Katy took the blame for everything, explaining in the polite ladylike fashion she wore at times as she wore a dress, that Prissy the cow had had such a time, that she, Katy, had lost her head from excitement and called Dr. Andy.

  In spite of the strong hot drink and the comforting words from her callers, Dorie's hot anger gave place to nothing better than cold despair. She looked old and mournful and dejected as she sat and stared into the fire and vowed that she would sell or give Prissy away. However, her despair quickly changed to troubled eagerness when Katy, after a good bit of preamble with Mattie the telephone girl, called that Poke Easy, on his way home in Hawthorne Town, wanted to talk with her about the tobacco.

  Delph hesitated a moment and followed her into the hall where she listened and watched Dorie as she received the tobacco news; the Fairchild tobacco had gone on a fast market at an average of thirty-two cents a pound, one of the highest averages for that day. Marsh and Poke Easy would be home soon, but first they must stop in Hawthorne for a bit of celebration. Dorie bade them drink no more than they could carry, warned them that Brother Eli would stay to supper, but said nothing of Prissy's bastard.

  Delph had come gradually nearer, until when Dorie hung up the receiver, she was just by her elbow, her disappointed eyes still on the telephone. "Diddid he say anything about Marsh?"

  "Marsh's fine. They're both fine. Everything's fine," Dorie

  Page 127

  answered and started to tell the others, but stopped abruptly on seeing Delph's face.

  "II just thought Marsh might ask to speak to me. That was why I waited."

  Dorie patted her shoulder. "Now, Delph, don't start bein' like that. Why he's only been gone three days."

  "But we've only been married five," she answered, and turned from Dorie's eyes, but not quickly enough.

  "Why, Delph, you're cryin'.Marsh had to go to see about his job."

  "I'm not cryin'," she answered, and ran down the hall and up the stairs to Marsh's bedroomher room now. Dorie's call of, "don't be foolish now," followed her, but she did not answer. She stood a moment by one of the windows, though she could see nothing of Burdine, only the old Weaver Place, a red brick house and a run down farm over the Cumberland.

  Not long after Katy was calling up the stairs, didn't she think it would be nice to make a freezer of ice cream for supper? They could find plenty of ice left from the last hard freeze on the river hill. Delph dried her eyes, tied on an apron, and went hurrying down to help with the supper getting.

  The preparation of food at Fairchild Place was never the prosaic, well-planned business it was in Fronie's kitchen. Dorie's method of getting a meal consisted in none at all; and Delph enjoyed it. Some things Dorie cooked because a member of her household had wished for or liked that particular thing; others she cooked because she just happened to remember, usually at the last minute, that she hadn't a mess of that certain food in a long while, and still other dishes she served because they were in season or going to waste.

  Tonight, because of Katy's wish for ice cream and chocolate cake, Dr. Andy's love of a good sweet potato pie, Brother Eli's strictly vegetarian diet, Poke Easy's insistence that home cured ham be served each meal he was home, Marsh's love of beans and bean soup, and also due to the fact that in the morning a neighbor down the road had returned a leg of beef borrowed a month before, and since the smoke house was crowded with fresh pork from the last hog killing, Dorie's supper preparations took a more breathless turn than common.

  Page 128

  Delph and Katy were kept busy running to the cellar, the smoke house, or up to the attic for herbs hung there to dry. Between times of running there was the stirring of this, the turning of that, keeping the stove stoked with wood, and ears strained, especially Delph's, for the coming of Poke Easy and Marsh.

  Delph was rolling pie crust when Poke Easy's blonde head and wide shoulders came through the back door. She knew that Marsh was somewhere near. Heedless of Poke Easy's hearty greeting, the half rolled pie crust, and her floury han
ds, she dashed through the door and down the barnyard walk, never noticing that snow sifted into her low shoes. Marsh was fastening the barnyard gate, and did not hear her through the snow. She flung her arms about his neck and teasingly put her hands over his eyes. He straightened suddenly, struggling away and exclaiming, "Now, what th' Hell."