The Fields of Home

  I drove Uncle Levi down to Lisbon Falls, and he wouldn’t even let me tell him how sorry I was that I’d messed everything up. He only grumbled, “Say nothing! Say nothing!” when I tried to talk to him. Once he said—and I think it was to himself—“Should have knowed better . . . Ain’t no sense a-trying to change him over.” The rest of the time, he just sat there looking like a tired old bear.

  He didn’t say anything more till the train was pulling into the depot. Then he picked up his suitcase, took hold of my shoulder tight, and said, “Don’t let Thomas kill hisself off a-working, just to prove we was wrong.”

  He had one foot up on the car step when he turned back, passed me a ring with four keys on it, and said, “Here, Ralph! You might have need of ’em. Them’s to the drawers in the workbench.” Then his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “The bottle’s under my mattress. See Thomas gets a spoonful afore supper every night.”

  12

  Millie Agrees to Help

  GRANDFATHER hadn’t even come to the house when Uncle Levi left. I had looked back as we drove out of the yard, and he was yanking the tangled horsefork tackle out of the barn doorway. When I drove back in, the ripped-off piece of ridgepole was lying on top of the woodpile, and Grandfather was mowing down in the swale.

  I unhitched Old Nell, watered her, and took her to the barn. What had been left of the load was still on the hayrack, and the yella colt was in his stall, with his harness tangled around his feet. I took it off him, and went down to tell Grandfather how sorry I was for having messed things up with the horsefork.

  The swale was down below the cold spring that filled the watering trough at the back corner of the barn. When I’d mowed the east field, I’d had to cut around it. The ground was so soft that the mower wheels sank deep and the grass was so rank that the cutter bar couldn’t go through it. Grandfather was well out into the wettest part of the swale, swinging his scythe like fury. The cold water was above my ankles by the time I’d waded out to him. He was breathing so hard the whiskers flew around his mouth at every swing, but he didn’t slow up or look up, and before I’d said three words, he shouted, “Go off! Go off! Get out of here! Go see what more you can find to stave up!”

  There was no use trying to talk to him. As I walked back toward the barn, I tried to make up my mind once and for all, whether I should go straight to Colorado, or go past Medford so I could say good-bye to Mother and the other children. I was still trying to decide, when the hogs in the barn cellar started squealing as though they were killing each other. I grabbed up the nearest stick, and ran in there as fast as I could go.

  At first, it looked as if they might be fighting over a sea serpent in the pond at the foot of the manure pile. As my eyes became a little more used to the dimness, I could see that it was a long heavy rope. Near the top of the heap, one prong of the horsefork stuck out, with the grapple hook curved like a beckoning finger. I don’t know why I bothered to—except that Uncle Levi had put in so much work to make it—but I drove the hogs away, found a long plank, and fished both the fork and rope out of the mess. I cleaned the fork the best I could, hid it under the straw in an empty pig pen, and was stringing the rope along the top of the foundation wall, when Millie called dinner. By that time, I’d decided to stop off at Medford, and that I’d go into Boston to see Uncle Levi, so I could tell him where to find the horsefork.

  There was no sense in starting off without my dinner, and I had to change clothes and get my suitcase, but I couldn’t go to the house the way I was. While I was washing at the spring, I saw Grandfather clambering up over the boulder wall to the dooryard. Old Bess was standing at the foot of it, watching him and whining. I could hear Millie scolding him for getting his feet wet right after he’d been sick in bed. By the time I got to the summer kitchen, they were wrangling at each other like a pair of stray cats. Millie was mad because he’d driven Uncle Levi away, and he was calling her a tarnal fool woman for not having told him we were building the horsefork. He wouldn’t take his shoes off, and tracked mud across her clean kitchen floor.

  At the table, it was easy to see that they were both plenty peeved at me. They’d have paid more attention if a dog had been sitting in my chair. After a few minutes, I tried to tell Grandfather again that I was sorry about the ridgepole, and that I was going away, but he cut me off short. “Let your victuals stop your mouth! Let your victuals stop your mouth!” he scolded. Then, before I’d eaten my pie, he snapped, “Quit your dawdling! Get the hosses out! Time flies!”

  I went outside, but I didn’t go right to the barn. I still had Uncle Levi’s bench keys in my pocket, and I thought I’d better hide them somewhere in the carriage house. I might not be able to see him when I stopped off at Medford, but I could write him a letter and tell him where I’d hidden them. It seemed to me that maybe a letter would be better than seeing him anyway. I could just write him that Grandfather had told me to go away. Then he wouldn’t blame me for going, and he couldn’t tell me the horsefork trouble was all my own fault; that everything would have been all right if I’d listened to him about the hole in the ridgepole being too near the edge. The more I thought of it, the more I knew that was just what he ought to tell me. It was the truth. If I hadn’t been so cocksure, Uncle Levi would still be right there with us, and we’d already have three or four loads of hay hauled from the east field. All the time I’d been thinking, I’d been walking back and forth in the carriage house. I stuffed the keys back into my pocket, and went to harness the horses.

  That afternoon and the next day were about the worst time I ever had in my life. Grandfather was sick enough that he should have been in bed, but he wouldn’t go. He’d pitch hay till he was staggering. Then instead of going somewhere to rest, he’d rake scatterings and scold me. Once when he was about ready to drop, I said, “Uncle Levi told me not to let you . . . ”

  “Levi! Levi!” he hollered. “Going off to Boston and leaving me with down hay in the field and rain a-coming on! Don’t you say Levi to me!” It didn’t look as if it would rain for a month, and I didn’t say Levi again, but I wished he were still there.

  Millie was so worried about Grandfather that she was nearly sick herself, and the more she worried, the crosser she got. Beside cooking the meals and getting up to take care of Grandfather during the night, she was doing a man’s work in the field. I couldn’t tell whether she was still mad at me about the horsefork, or whether she was just so tired and worried that she couldn’t be decent to anybody. Twice, she yanked the yella colt around till she set him balking, then told Grandfather that if he didn’t get some hired help around there, his hay could rot in the field, and slammed off to the house. He yelled after her to mind her manners, and that he didn’t want any tarnal woman out in the field abusing the critters, but he did go to the road and talk to the mailman about looking for a hired man, and Millie did come back to help us.

  At Grandfather’s, the mailman didn’t just bring the mail. He carried messages from one house to another, brought things from the stores in the village, or passed the word around if someone was looking for help.

  The day after Uncle Levi went, three men came looking for jobs, but none of them stayed. One of them wanted a dollar and a half a day, and Grandfather would only pay a dollar. Another worked just long enough to be called a shiftless, lazy fool. The third man came in the middle of the afternoon and seemed to be a crackerjack. He said a dollar a day was all right with him, he could pitch hay better than most men, and he didn’t pay any attention to Grandfather’s or Millie’s crabbiness. From the time Uncle Levi went until the new man came, we’d only hauled three small loads of hay, but before sundown we’d put two great big loads on the mows.

  When the man left us, he left in an awful hurry. Right after supper, I had to go for the cows and Grandfather went down to do something around the beehives. I might have been out in the pasture a little longer than I should have, because I circled around by the high field. As soon as I had our cows in the tie-up, I went to the hou
se for the milk bucket, and the new hired man nearly ran over me. I was right at the summer-kitchen doorway when he came tearing out with Millie right behind him. She was swinging the heavy iron frying pan like a tennis racket, and there was hot grease all over the back of his shirt. He never stopped running till he was out in the road, and he never came back for his hat and jumper. “That’ll learn him a thing or two,” Millie snapped, as she watched him go. “Just like all the rest of the devilish men! Ain’t one of ’em you can trust as far as you can heave a skillet!”

  During the night, Grandfather was pretty sick. I heard Millie up with him two or three times, and in the morning he was burning with fever. I wanted to go for a doctor, but he wouldn’t let me. He said my time would be better spent hauling hay than chasing off to the village, and that Millie could take care of him better than any tarnal doctor.

  I’d never thought a woman like Millie would cry, but she came awfully close to it at the breakfast table. She blamed herself for driving off the good hay pitcher, and for not catching Uncle Levi and me before we had the horsefork up in the barn. She was sure all the hay was going to spoil in the fields, but the thing that seemed to make her feel worst was that Grandfather wouldn’t be able to go to the reunion. I tried to tell her that if they’d let me get a doctor, Grandfather would probably be well in a day or two, and that if we could find just one good man, be and I could take care of the haying. She’d only sniff at me, say there weren’t any good men, and that a spell like this one always lasted a week with Grandfather. Then she raked me all to pieces when I admitted that the horsefork had been my idea instead of Uncle Levi’s.

  While I was harnessing the yella colt I got an idea. Grandfather’s being sick might be the only thing that would save the hay crop. At the rate we had been going, it would take more than a month to finish the job. Long before that, the grass would have gone to seed, dried up in the fields, and be worthless for hay. By using the horsefork for unloading, I thought two men could do the whole job in two weeks. I couldn’t see any chance of getting another man, but Millie was almost as good as one. If I could get her to help me use the horsefork when Grandfather didn’t know about it, we could save half the hay before he was out of bed. I was sure there was only one way I could get her to do it. I would have to make her think I was going away. I picked up the broken piece of ridgepole from the woodpile, took it to the carriage house, and called Millie. She didn’t want to come and was grouchy when she got there. “Now what kind of fool notion you got in your head?” she snapped at me, as she came through the doorway.

  “It won’t make any difference to you what it is,” I said, “because I’m going back to Colorado right now. I just wanted to let you know, so nobody could say I’d run away.”

  For about two seconds, Millie looked like a wildcat about to strike. Her hands drew into claws, and her eyes almost burned as she glared at me. Then, just as quickly, tears came, spilled over, and rolled down her cheeks. She swiped them away with the backs of her hands, “Fine kind of grandson for a man to have; leave him when he’s needed most,” she said chokingly.

  “What’s the sense of my staying here any longer?” I asked her. “Grandfather drove Uncle Levi away, you drove the only good man we’ve had away, and I’ve hardly heard a decent word from either of you since I’ve been here.”

  “Can’t you see he’s worried sick about getting the crop in afore it goes to ruin in the fields? You’d be cranky if you was worried as much as Thomas is. He’s a’ready like to worried hisself to death.”

  “He isn’t as worried as he is bullheaded,” I told her. “If he had let us use the horsefork, we could have had the haying all finished in ten days.”

  “Thomas don’t stand for no fool contraptions,” she snapped at me. “If you hadn’t put Levi up to making the fool thing, there wouldn’t have been no trouble, and the hay would have all been in the mows afore the Fourth of July.”

  “It isn’t a fool thing,” I told her, “and the hay wouldn’t have been in by the Fourth without it. As near as I can figure, there are more than sixty loads left in the fields, most of it uncut, and the way we were going, it would have taken a month to get it all in.” Then I started to walk out of the carriage house, and said, “But what difference does it make now? I can’t do it alone, and I’ve had about all the scolding I’ll take from anybody.”

  Millie grabbed my sleeve as I went by her. When I turned, there were tears in her eyes again, and both her face and her voice were pleading. “You ain’t really going, Ralphie . . . Ralph, be you? I’ll help you, and we can at least save some of it.”

  It had worked around just the way I’d hoped it would, and gave me a chance to say, “We could save most of it if you weren’t just as bullheaded as Grandfather.”

  “I ain’t bullheaded!” she snapped. Then she looked right into my eyes, and her under lip was trembling. “I won’t row at you no more, Ralph, and I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “All right, Millie,” I said, and picked up the piece of ridgepole from where I’d stood it by the doorway. “Do you see where the hole was bored at the edge of the break?” She nodded, and I went on, “That’s the fool thing. That’s what happened because I was cocksure and bullheaded. If I’d put a new hole higher in the ridgepole, the way Uncle Levi wanted me to, it would never have torn out. You saw how well those first three loads went up. There’s nothing the matter with the horsefork. If we use it to unload with, you and I can put up half the hay before Grandfather is ever out of bed.”

  Millie stood for three or four minutes, looking out across the fields and twisting one forefinger. “Where’s the cussed thing at now?” she asked.

  “Down in the barn cellar. Grandfather threw it into the manure heap, but I fished it out.”

  “He’ll be fit to wring your neck if he catches you using it . . . mine, too.”

  “I thought you said he’d be sick in bed for a week.”

  “He will, but you can’t trust him not to get up and go poking around.”

  “Well,” I told her, “it’s just a case of whether I go now, or we get some of that hay in before he catches us. I’ll take a chance on my neck if you’ll take a chance on yours.”

  “Get the hosses out!” Millie told me. “I’ll go see how Thomas is doing. Like as not he’ll sleep a little after being awake most of the night.” Then she hurried back to the house.

  13

  The Horsefork Works

  FOR the next two weeks, Millie and I were busy from the time we could see in the morning till we couldn’t keep our eyes open at night. I strung the horsefork up again, and we taught Old Nell to pull the tote-rope without being led. Millie learned to set the horsefork, and I stowed the hay away in the mows. The weather stayed good, and we alternated: mowing and raking in the forenoons, and hauling as late as we could see in the afternoons. That gave Millie the mornings to do her housework and take care of Grandfather, and it let us do the hauling when the hay was driest. By sharpening mowing machine sickles and making repairs in the evenings, I didn’t have any trouble with the equipment, and always had dry hay ready for hauling in the afternoons.

  Grandfather was our biggest worry. It wasn’t his sickness that worried us; it was his getting better. He seemed to have been right about Millie’s being able to take care of him as well as a doctor. After the first four days, we could never tell when he’d get up and come outdoors.

  Almost every morning, he’d get up and have breakfast with us, then he’d often fuss around the bee shop or the hives for an hour or two. Sometimes he’d walk out as far as the pasture with Old Bess at his heels, but we never saw him go to the barn, and he’d usually be back in bed before noon. When I’d finished with the horserake, I always backed it into the chockecherry thicket at the foot of the orchard. Once we watched him walk within ten feet of it, but he didn’t look that way, and the mornings that I used it were the ones when he worked in the bee shop.

  One day, early in our second week, Grandfather came out to Niah’s
field while we were loading. He didn’t offer to help, but either sat on a shock or poked around the stonewall, hunting for a ground-hog’s hole. When the rack was piled so high I could hardly reach the top, he wandered toward the house. Millie stood on the load watching him as he climbed the high end of the wall, crossed the dooryard, and went into the house. “What in tunket do you cal’late’s got into Thomas?” she asked me. “He ain’t no sicker’n I be right this blessed minute, and there he goes, leaving us to do all his haying for him while he lays abed. I do declare! I never seen the beat of the man in all my born days. First off, he worries hisself sick abed ’cause the hay won’t be in afore the Fourth, and now he stays abed so’s there ain’t no chance of it.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed,” I told her. “If he’ll keep on playing sick four more days, we’ll just about have the haying licked, and the Fourth of July is nearly a week away. Unless it rains, or Grandfather catches us using the horsefork, the last forkful should be on the mows by sunset of the second.”

  On the morning of the second, I was sure our luck had run out. The sky at sunrise was as red as fire, and anyone could have told there’d be heavy rain long before the day was over. Grandfather was as fidgety as an old mare. He called me when the first streaks of pink showed above Hall’s hill, and he fretted about one thing or another all through breakfast. “Get your hosses out! Get your hosses out, whilst I take the cows to pasture!” he snapped at me before I’d finished eating. “Time flies, and there’s rain a-coming on! We’ll have to stir our stivvers afore it gets here!”

  Millie pushed her chair back, took her cup, and went to the stove. She looked frightened and, as she poured tea into the cup, she was shaping words to me with her lips. I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say, but it didn’t make any difference, so I just turned the palms of my hands up. The barn was stuffed nearly to the peak. Instead of leaving pitch-up landings, we’d built the mows well out over the driveway in the center of the floor. There was no way of putting more hay up, except with a horsefork. Sooner or later, Grandfather would know we’d been using it all the time. He might as well know it now. He had better sense than to think we’d been pitching hay thirty feet straight up into the air.