Jaw Buster Miller’s house was just over the next rise, but further back from the road. It was a nice-looking house, with new paint and lots of windows, for Jaw Buster had long made steady money on the railroad section gang. But now the uncurtained windows shone blindly in the sun like the unseeing eyes of the dead, all save one, and it was broken. Some youngen had done that; she paused, wondering if it could have been one of her own. Her own and the Hull children were about the only ones left big enough to throw rocks. Jaw Buster’s family had soon followed him when he left the section gang for bigger money in a steel mill at Gary, Indiana.
She stopped and shifted the basket of eggs to her other arm when just ahead she saw Samuel Hull’s store and post office. She stared at the building for some minutes, frowning, her lips moving. She walked again, still frowning in thought, but whispering hoarsely now, “Miz Hull, I don’t recken you’ve heared enything about Clovis.” Her frown deepened. That didn’t sound right, not to Mrs. Hull, with her eighteen-year-old son across the ocean and her husband gone to war work.
She reached the turning in of the lane, and saw with relief that she wouldn’t have to ask Mrs. Hull to quit her work and come to the store. The store door was open, and sleeping in the sun by the store porch was a high-shouldered, sway-backed mule hitched to a homemade sled. The old mule never lifted his head nor left off his dozing when she walked up, but she nodded to him as to a neighbor; and to the thin spotted hound with the torn left ear curled asleep in the sled she spoke, her voice apologetic, touched with sorrow. “I heared you two nights ago, Sugar Bell, but I couldn’t come. Nobody’s left to come now to th foxes you hole.”
The old hound lifted his head and looked at her with rheumy, sleep-dulled eyes. She smiled at him, then hurried up the porch steps. The small-windowed store and post office seemed dark as a cave after the bright sunlight, and for an instant she could see nothing, only hear the twittering voice of her mother-in-law, “Thank goodness, it’s Gertie.”
Then Mrs. Hull’s pleased welcome, “You’ve come right when you was needed th most.”
The blackness cleared, and Gertie saw the two women, side by side, on a homemade bench by the stove, smiling up at her, but weary, troubled under the smiles. Clovis’s mother, whom Gertie, like everyone else in the settlement, called Aunt Kate, seemed smaller, thinner, with whiter hair and browner skin than Gertie could remember. When she reached to pull a cockle burr off Gertie’s coattail, the hand seemed some little brittle thing whittled from brown wood, but there was life and kindliness in her voice as she asked:
“You all well, Gertie? How’s Cassie Marie? She didn’t come with t’others that Sunday about a week ago. Amos was a looken good. I was plum ashamed I never did git out to see him, but I cain’t allus be a beggen off one a Miz Hull’s girls to stay with th old man.”
“Law, Aunt Kate, Amos was might nigh well when I brung him home. It was mighty good a you to come an stay with th youngens while I had him at th doctor’s,” Gertie said, remembering all the times she had thanked Aunt Kate for help in time of trouble. At all the bornings of her children, it had been Aunt Kate who came instead of her mother. The children had all had whooping cough when Amos was a baby hardly six months old. Her mother had been too puny to come, but Aunt Kate had helped her through the nights with the choking little ones and the vomiting older children. But then, as now, there had been only stumbling words of gratitude, never the right words. She smiled on the older woman and wished for words, something easy and careless for asking about Clovis. She didn’t want to add to Aunt Kate’s worries; troubled enough she was now with three other boys gone, and the baby one Jesse missing for six months.
She was still hunting words when Aunt Kate, restless-tongued like her sister Sue Annie, asked, “Your mother holden up pretty good?”
Gertie nodded. The childhood hope that her mother could live like other people instead of just “holding up” had long since died to a wish.
“I heared Clovis didn’t come back frum his army examination,” Aunt Kate said, getting up. “That Sunday I kinda thought he acted like it was goodbye, th way he set around with th old man. You got any notion if’n he’s went straight into th army er to one a them factories?”
Gertie shook her head. “I’ll shorely hear in this evenin’s mail. It’s better’n a week now.” She tried to hold her voice level and let it show nothing of the terror that had ridden her most of the time since last mail day, when she had decided that something bad must have happened to Clovis. Almost as hard to bear as the fear were the shame and vexation that came on her now with the calmly waiting women when her mind decided that nothing was wrong with Clovis except that he just hadn’t bothered to write.
“A week ain’t hardly long enough to hear,” Aunt Kate was saying. “It’ll be five weeks an two days since I heared frum Barney. An then it was one a them funny little letters a body cain’t hardly read, like th last I had frum Jesse.”
“You’ll be a hearen—a hearen real soon,” Mrs. Hull said, getting up, smiling at the older woman, who now, like a restless bird, had flitted to the door, “An anyhow, we’ve got one piece a luck—Gertie can help us load this sled.”
Gertie set the basket of eggs on the counter. She turned around and for the first time noticed, halfway between the stove and the back of the room, a sack of cow feed. The gay pattern of purple flowers and red-billed parrots of its covering seemed a thing from some gayer world, dropped by accident into the old store with its homemade shelves and counters and smoky-brown plank walls. There was something contrary about its plump brightness stretched on the floor between the two weak-backed women, neither of whom had ever been any good at lifting, and Mrs. Hull with a baby hardly six weeks old.
“I’ve got to learn to manage this store thout a man,” Mrs. Hull said. “I keep a thinken a man’ull come along when I know they’s no man to come,” and she watched with something like envy as Gertie picked up the hundred-pound sack of feed, and tossed it lightly to her shoulder.
Gertie smiled. “I recken I’ll have to be th man in this settlement. Aunt Kate, you’d ought to ha sent fer me er Reuben to git up this feed.”
“Law, I can manage,” Aunt Kate said, gathering up the reins. “We’ve still got plenty a coal Clovis hauled us, an ever time Reuben comes he cuts more stove wood. I been so addled, I never noticed I was runnen out a cow feed. An sean as it was a pretty day, I thought a little walk ud do Jerry good; he’s stood around so long he’s gitten stiff.”
She turned to the hound, who had climbed out of the sled when Gertie threw in the sack of feed, “You can git back in now, Sugar Bell. All at once seems like he’s got old, an he won’t hardly eat nothen. Any kind a little hunt runs him down fer three er four days till he cain’t do nothen but sleep. I biled us all up a hen t’other day, an he didn’t eat no more’n th old man. Jesse’ull be a thinken I didn’t take good care a him like I said I would. If’n you git any lard, Mary, recollect to save me some—butter shortenen in th biscuit bread is a killen th old man. Gertie, I hate to run off like this, but if th house was to burn down th old man couldn’t hope hissef.” She saw Cassie with Gyp at her heels skipping down the lane and waving a bunch of red dogwood berries. “Let her go with me, Gertie, she’ll be a sight a company.”
Gertie hesitated. She seldom let Cassie go visiting alone, forever spilling things, falling down, wandering off into the woods, talking to herself and confusing her deaf old grandfather, she might be more trouble than company. But while she hesitated, Aunt Kate had stopped the sled, Cassie had jumped in, and was now commanding Gyp to come ride with Sugar Bell. There was nothing for Gertie to do but remind Cassie to be a good girl and help her granma, and call to Aunt Kate not to make another trip for the mail. She would bring it and get Cassie. “Recollect,” Mrs. Hull called, “it’ll be late; Uncle Ansel is a riden his mule.”
The mule had started again, and Kate followed, giving no sign that she had heard. “I wisht she’d set on that sled an ride,” Gertie said.
“She cain’t hardly set still a minnit,” Mrs. Hull said. “She keeps a thinken she’ll hear frum Jesse; she won’t give in to believen that missen in action so long could mean—” Remembering Gertie’s uncounted eggs, she turned back toward the door of the store.
Gertie followed, then stopped in the doorway. “My traden can wait till mail time. I come …” One finger popped and then another before she could bring out the words. “To tell you th truth, I jist got so fidgety wonderen on Clovis I jist started out; I thought mebbe you, Aunt Kate, somebody—knowed—”
“It’s th first few days that is th worst,” Mrs. Hull said. “About all a body can do is keep real busy.”
“That’s one a my troubles right now,” Gertie said. “I’m pretty well caught up on th fall work—an renten a place ain’t like haven one a yer own to work on.” She looked at a small patch of ground that bordered the lane, a dead-looking spot that seemed mostly weeds. “Miz Hull, couldn’t I dig yer taters? I’d ruther be a doen somethen than visiten—er plain waiten.”
Mrs. Hull looked at the little field, started to say something, but choked. Gertie remembered that Andy, her oldest child, had planted the potatoes, taking time out from high school in March—in May he had graduated—and now in early November he was on the other side of the world. “Where’s a spaden fork?” she asked, more and more ashamed of her own weak ways when her turn at waiting came; and when Mrs. Hull hesitated she insisted, “Back in th old days everybody hoped th preachers do their work, an it ud be a sin to let em rot.”
“But you must let me pay you,” Mrs. Hull said. “Samuel’s not a preacher—now. He’s left God’s work fer Oak Ridge.” She shivered. “Whatever it is.”
“I recken he thought it was his patriotic duty,” Gertie said, as she went with Mrs. Hull for the spading fork. She didn’t like the accusing way the woman spoke of Samuel, for he among all the preachers she had known seemed closest to God. He worked with his hands like Jesus, but better yet she’d never heard him try to scare the souls of the people loose and herd them up to God like driving stampeded sheep into a locked barn.
She thought sometimes on Samuel and the other ones away as she worked, sending the prongs of the spading fork slowly down with her foot, then pushing gently backward with one hand on the handle so that the hill of potatoes came up with the earth, unscarred and whole. The shadows of the little mounds of earth she made, shortened, turned more northward, but lay a little westward still when Mrs. Hull called her to the good and bounteous dinner she and Rachel, the oldest girl, had cooked.
She and Mrs. Hull and the seven little Hulls of eating size sat about the long oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen, while the baby slept in a back bedroom, and the radio played softly in the front room. They ate with little talk. Mrs. Hull was absent-minded, passing Gertie the fried fresh ham twice, and never the potatoes at all. Once she went to see about the baby, she said, but she must have looked at the clock in the front room, for when she sat down again she said: “I allus hoped they’d never take Clovis. He could a kept that old mail car a runnen. When Uncle Ansel rides his mule seems like mail-day waiten lasts ferever.”
“Where’s Andy?” Gertie asked, and hoped her voice would sound the way she would have it sound—easy and off-like, as if he were away visiting; not low and sad the way her mother had always wanted people to ask about her health.
“His letters come through New York, an frum th way they sound we think he’s in France,” Mrs. Hull answered. She had learned to manage her voice; “France” to the listening children might have been a neighbor’s place over the hill.
Gertie shook her head to Mrs. Hull’s after-dinner urging that she sit awhile and listen to the news broadcast that came at twelve o’clock. Mrs. Hull’s house, like her mother’s and most houses, smothered her.
It was good to be alone back in the potato patch. But the sun had hardly started down the sky before she heard a woman’s voice and children’s chatter in the lane. She looked up to see Mamie Childers with a baby on one arm, a split basket of eggs in her other hand, the basket dragged down by a child hardly of good walking size, whimpering and stumbling as it hung on to the handle. Some distance behind came her oldest, no older than Amos, but big enough to carry the empty coal-oil can.
Mamie saw Gertie, started to wave, but remembered she had no hand free, and came on so fast the toddler let go the basket and stood wailing in the road. “Has th mail got in yit?” Mamie asked, gasping, putting the basket of eggs on the ground, and letting her tired body sag against the fence. She didn’t live much more than a mile away, but it was an uphill climb with such a dragging load.
“Uncle Ansel had to ride his mule,” Gertie explained. “It’ll mebbe be on th other side a sundown fore he gits in.”
“Oh,” Mamie said, and then again, “Oh.” Gertie thought she was going to cry when she said, her voice still breathless, “I cain’t be dark a gittin back home.” She asked quickly, as if afraid of the answer, “Is th ole mail car so tore up Clovis cain’t fix it?”
“Clovis is gone,” Gertie said, bending to dig another hill.
“Lord, Lord,” Mamie said, her words a kind of troubled moaning. “What’ll I do when I run out a coal? I cain’t cut wood to do no good. An what’ll we uns do now if a youngen gits sick an nobody to take it to th doctor?”
“I tuck mine on a mule,” Gertie said.
“But you’ve got big youngens, big enough to leave by theirselves at home,” Mamie said. She was leaning heavily against the fence, as if the learning of the goneness of Clovis, the last man, had been the last burden her tired body could bear; but her eyes, Gertie thought, looked more sick than tired. They were big and bright as the eyes of a child just coming out of a long spell of fever.
“Whyn’t you go set with Miz Hull an listen to th radio? You look plum tuckered. We’ll all git along, somehow,” Gertie comforted.
“Don’t tell me to go listen to no radio,” Mamie said. “Alec got me one afore he left. ‘It’ll be company,’ he says. But I hate th thing.”
“They say th war news ain’t so bad,” Gertie said.
“Oh, it ain’t th news. An anyhow Alec ain’t in Germany where Hitler is. He’s in France, Miz Hull figgered frum his letters.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s th people on th radio. I cain’t git used to em. I fergit.” She looked at Gertie, held her with her eyes. “T’other night I was a comen in frum milken—it was a misten rain an already dusty dark in th valley—an I heard this woman a talken in th house. She didn’t talk so quair-sounden like most a them on th radio does, an I thinks to myself, ‘Somebody’s come a visiten, an they’ll mebbe stay all night.’ I broke into a run, a spillen haf th milk, an was clean through th kitchen fore I recollected th radio, an knowed I was still by myself. Th youngens thought I was crazy when I cried. But it would ha been so good on that black rainy night to ha had some neighbor woman by fer company.”
“Law, woman,” Gertie said, moving to the next hill, “you’ve got plenty a company—yer youngens. They’s a sight a company in jist a little baby. An yer stock—a good milk cow is a kinda friendly thing. An all snug down there in th valley with trees close, an that creek to hear, an then th radio.”
Mamie shook her head with despair at Gertie’s lack of understanding. “But what if I got mistook agin when I heared people, real people, an I jist thought it was th radio, an it was somebody mean mebbe comen to kill me an th youngens?”
“But, honey, they ain’t no men, nobody left in this whole country to hurt a body,” Gertie said, looking away from the woman’s eyes, then back again, smiling. “But if’n it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll send Clytie down tomorrow evenin to stay th night. An when th weather turns bad, she can stay with yer little youngens long enough fer you to come git yer mail.”
Mamie had flashed her a look of inexpressible gratitude when a wail from down the lane caused her to turn her head, then cry, “Oh, Lordy, I cain’t so much as talk fer these youngens.” She rushed to the two-yea
r-old who had fallen into a muddy rut in the road, and now lay screaming, gommed from head to foot with mud and water.
Gertie hurried with her digging. If she wasted much more time in gabbing, she wouldn’t finish the patch by dark. But as always she paused a moment at the end of the row away from the house. Samuel’s ridge fields were even higher than her rented ones. Standing on the edge of the field, she could see across the valley of the Big South Fork where white-painted houses like Samuel’s and her mother’s shone on green lawns above brownish fields of shocked corn that stretched down to the willow-fringed river. Higher than the houses rose the hay and pasture fields, still green from the rainy fall. The fields went up the lower slopes of the front row of hills to meet the timber near the top; and past this first row of timbered peaks and ridges others stretched away for miles and miles.
She always hurried at the other end near the store where there was nothing to see but the little Hulls beginning to do their night work. She heard through the open front door the hum of Mrs. Hull’s sewing machine and one of the younger boys singing to the baby brother whom Andy, the oldest, had never seen; but louder than anything was Mamie’s talk, a loud, excited, half laughing, half quarreling talk, the noise of a woman with her tongue hungry for talk.
More people came down the lane: children running, women with babies in their arms walking tiredly, old women like Sue Annie, hurrying, with no wind left for gossiping. They would see her and forget the old greetings of other days like, “How’s your mother a holden up, Gertie?” or, “Law, Law, it’s been a time an a time since I’ve seen you. When are you a comen to stay all day?” Instead, they all, young and old, asked with breathless abruptness, “Has th mail got in?”