A Part of the Sky

  The May afternoon seemed so quiet, as if adding its own silent psalm. A thrush warbled from high in a red-budding maple. The three of us held hands, dirt and all. Their fingers felt gritty in mine. Frail strength.

  Daisy, I was facing up to, might die next. But this weren’t no proper moment to tell my mother and her older sister.

  As we stood by the massive mound of earth, Mama, in a quiet voice, spoke a few Shaker words about how farmers and animals live together, and die together on a shared plot. She recited it all like a hymn that was missing its music.

  “The resting of death,” Mama said, “becomes a part of the land, as clouds are a part of the sky.”

  Also by Robert Newton Peck:

  A Day No Pigs Would Die

  Soup

  Soup and Me

  Soup for President

  Soup’s Drum

  Soup on Wheels

  Soup in the Saddle

  Soup’s Goat

  Soup on Ice

  Soup Ahoy

  Soup 1776

  Copyright © 1994 by Robert Newton Peck

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover as a Borzoi Book by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1994.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97–066631

  eISBN: 978-0-307-57436-7

  RL: 5.3

  v3.1

  To a mother and aunt who worked a farm as men yet stayed softer than quilts.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Chapter

  1

  “Robert,” he said, “thank you for coming on time.”

  I smiled. “You can bank on me, Ben. Just as you could always count on my father.”

  “Punctuality is a Vermont virtue. Perhaps our only.”

  Mr. Benjamin Franklin Tanner, our neighbor, returned his watch to a pocket and held out a hand. Ben’s handshake was firm yet friendly. Together we walked toward Mr. Tanner’s freshly whitewashed horse barn.

  “No school today?”

  “Yes, but I don’t go too regular. I like school a lot. And my teachers. But we somehow got to keep our home. So the eighth grade can possible do without me.”

  Mr. Tanner understood. My father, Haven Peck, died two weeks ago; I’d skipped school a few days to work our farm, taking over for Mama and Aunt Carrie. Ben didn’t scold. I had choices to make. And made them.

  We stopped in the long aisle outside a box stall where a stallion smell was male strong. It was seven o’clock on a May morning, so I had to squint to see beyond the stall bars. Inside, a powerful horse turned to stare at us. His name, neatly lettered on the gate shingle, read:

  GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

  “This big gentleman might turn a lick frisky,” Ben warned, sliding the door a foot, “so best we don’t spook him. Easy boy,” he told his chesty gray.

  “He’s right handsome,” I said. “Always is.”

  General nickered.

  Pulling a carrot from a shirt pocket, Ben Tanner snapped off a short orange log, offering the treat on his open palm. General Lee sniffed it, approved, lipped and munched. As he ate, Ben touched the stud’s massive neck with a cautious hand, then slipped a well-oiled halter over head and ears, fastening the buckle tongue to a snug but comfortable notch.

  “Now then, Robert, let’s parade him out into the morning where I can see to check him over, to certain that he’s sound. Mr. Haskell Gamp’s coming at ten o’clock and bringing a wet mare.”

  We led General from his stall to a work area, a wide doorway that looked up to the main house.

  “Here’ll do,” Ben told me.

  Raising a hoof, General rapped the thick oak floor with his iron, making a hollow sound like a drum.

  “Our friend knows something’s up.” Ben winked at me. “Perhaps he reckons he’s fixing to entertain a lady visitor. That’s the reason he wasn’t free in the meadow last night. I boxed him so he’d behave quieter.”

  While I gripped the halter strap with a firm ten-finger purchase, Ben Tanner patted the gray withers, his hand floating softly and slowly, to inform General of his exact location and friendly intentions.

  Bending low, he hefted a front hoof.

  “Around any horse, Rob, be it familiar or strange, it’ll usual serve best to fetch up a front leg first. Even if you purpose to tend aft. Working with an animal’s brain saves time and sweat. A carrot’ll do ample more than a whip or a nose twitch.”

  “Papa said such,” I agreed. “He killed hogs, but he had a gent’s way about him.”

  Looking up at me, our neighbor offered a sad smile. “Indeed. I truly miss Haven Peck. So does Bess.”

  It was sort of magical. Because hardly had Ben Tanner spoke his wife’s name, she appeared, walking toward us in a pink-and-white apron, carrying a glass of something in each hand.

  “Morning, Mrs. Tanner,” I said, although I’d been told to use their first names.

  “A morning to you, Rob,” she said with a smile. “Now, the pair of you, don’t start thinking you’re royalty. I’m cleaning out the cooler, and I happened to have two glasses of buttermilk in the way. So here you go. Partake.”

  Ben downed his, I mine. It tasted rich and right restful. Bess wiped a corner of my mouth with a clean hanky and returned it to her apron pocket. As we handed our empty glasses to her, she took them with a wry face.

  “The trouble with buttermilk,” she said, “is that the empty glass looks so untidy.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  Ben nodded. We watched her amble back toward her kitchen, a dirty glass in each hand. Ben stood there holding his gray stallion until his wife disappeared inside the house. “At times,” he said softly, “I treasure Bess so much that it’s all I can do to keep from letting her know it.”

  He moved slowly to the stallion’s rear, maintaining contact, his shoulder brushing General’s furry flank. Winter was still thick on him, along with stall dust.

  “How’s his hoofs?” I asked.

  Stooping, Ben grunted. “Three appear solid. Now let’s handle number four.” Cradling the hoof between his knees, Ben used his thumbnail to chip off a few brown clods of dried mud. “Frog’s firm. The inside rim of the hoof feels soft and moist. That’s a blessing. Hard hoofs make a hard-hearted horse.” He paused. “But his shoe begs a reset.”

  Ben left, returning with smithing tools. Under his armpit was a short fullering bar. In seconds, he loosened the problem shoe and pried it off. The iron fell clanking to the wood.

  “Will we use a fire?” I asked.

  “No need. Were I to attend him fresh footwear, I’d shoe hot. No other way.”

  It made me almost grin to remember. Papa wouldn’t trust any farrier who would shoe cold. A mare was a lady who deserved warm slippers on her feet. I could hear Papa teaching me. I’d never forget any of his earthy reason. I carried his lessons with me, hurting like a pebble in a boot that I’d never empty out.

  Whack. Whack. Whack.
r />   The noise of Ben Tanner’s hammer brought me back to where I was now standing, steadying my neighbor’s stallion.

  Releasing the hoof, Ben straightened up slowly with a groan of age. “There,” he said, “he’s repaired. But before I twist off those nail points, cast your young eyes down yonder and lend me your opinion.”

  As Ben held the halter, I squatted to raise the hoof. It felt solid set. Even all around. “Snug tight,” I said. Before rising, I discovered a few brown burdock burrs on General’s fetlock. Small ones. Placing my free hand on the pastern, to steady the leg, I eased off the burrs. Then I stood.

  “Robert, you have a genuine touch for animals. That’s why I asked you to help me with my stud horse. You do possess a Peck manner. A quiet Shaker way.” Ben clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Never had I ever see a human being, man or boy, tame a pig the way you done last summer. That Pinky of yours, formerly mine, was close to a household pet.”

  I nodded. “My mistake was giving her a name.”

  “A shame you and your pa had to butcher Pinky. She was barren. Her end was a sorrow for you, Robert. Yet rightful and proper.” Ben sighed. “Manhood is doing what has to be done.”

  Remembering that dreadful December day, I realized that Papa had also killed a part of himself. Ben knew all about it. Said so. He and Bess meant a lot more to me than just neighbors. I ached to thank him, but I never seemed to find the right words.

  Before I could say anything, General Robert E. Lee tossed his mighty head twice, and rumbled his throat.

  “This boy must’ve took a whiff of something he didn’t like,” Ben said. Looking at me sideways, he asked, “You been breakfasting to beans?”

  Laughing, I pleaded innocent. “No, just some of Mama’s chicken giblet stew, spoon bread, vinegar, and turnips.”

  “Hold him steady,” Ben said, “while I fuller that hoof to prosperity.”

  Using tongs, he twisted off a silvery nail spike that was prickering up through the hoof, and bit off a second. He’d barely finished ironing when the stallion set to prancing his legs up and down, and I couldn’t manage to settle him.

  “Whoa,” I whispered. “Whoa now, General.”

  Ben stood. “Horse, what’s got into you? There’s not a bother of anything to smell.”

  As he spoke, I sudden knew that Mr. Ben Tanner was dead wrong. Looking downroad, I spotted a horse and rider coming our way at a trot. I noted a bridle but no saddle; the horseman seemed to sit unsteady as he bounced along, feet pointing out on both flanks of the horse as though he weren’t too comfortable at riding. He rode stiff-legged.

  “Somebody’s coming, Ben.”

  The stallion wouldn’t hold still. He persisted his dancing, snorted, and shook his mane. His tail arched as he fluttered a louder noise in his throat. A bear of a sound.

  “Hold him, Robert. Help me.”

  It was hard to believe that somebody would actual ride a wet mare toward a stud. Yet this man rode closer, trying to contain his mount. It was a bay. A deep brown with a black mane and tail.

  “Dang!” Ben spat. “It’s Haskell Gamp. That uppity man never could tell time, even if’n you painted a clock on his face. I particular asked him not to appear until ten o’clock, so’s I could afford General some extra oats and plenty of water to humor him down.”

  When the mare nickered, trouble exploded.

  There was no holding General Lee, now that he could see and hear a heated female he’d earlier caught wind of. Nostrils flaring, he reared high, boxing the air with his front hoofs. Ben tried to cling to the halter. His legs and my legs left the ground as I heard the halter snap. The gray stallion busted free.

  As my hands clawed and clutched at the mane of the rearing horse, the stud bucked, wheeled away from me, and attacked his owner. Ears back, he bared his teeth, then bit deep into the flesh of Ben’s body, between his neck and shoulder. Ben Tanner’s mouth opened, but the force of those long and powerful horse jaws silenced his scream.

  The gray, with his teeth planted into human meat, shook Ben worse than a terrier shakes a rat. Blood splattered.

  What eased Ben was because a in-season mare was present. As the stud charged her, Mr. Gamp fell off. On the ground, he lay yelling for help among eight active hoofs, his hands trying to protect his face from the dust and danger. When a stallion and a mare are both eager, it’s more ruckus than romance. Nature’s violent way.

  Kneeling to Ben, I watched it all happen.

  As General was trying to smell the bay’s rump, she kicked at him. Below, Mr. Gamp still held one of the bridle reins, and screamed. Above him, the two horses madly circled, ears back, around and around. Wild-eyed, the stallion was trumpeting, grunting, his hind legs spread and braced. Underneath him, he was extended, rigid, trying to gain position. Soon his teeth found her neck, clamped, and held. The mare’s neck arched, her head twisting one way and then another in an effort to escape the pain.

  General was larger, stronger, and not to be denied his stallionhood. As the bay began to tire, General dominated her with his superior weight, strength, and desire.

  The stud mounted the mare, had his way, and their unity ended as sudden as it had begun. The animals shuddered, froze for a breath, then parted. Both become docile.

  A dusty Mr. Gamp rose slowly to his feet to stagger to where Ben lay bleeding. Ben Tanner’s shirt, what little of it hadn’t been ripped off, was soaked dark with blood. Skinning off my own shirt, I quickly wadded it to a bundle, then pressed it against the gushing wound, pushing the soft cloth to Ben hard as possible.

  After a spell, his bleeding slowed and clotted. Gamp did little except stand there, whining, eyes red and face flushed. A dirty mess of a man. Fear flooded his face. As he leaned close, his breath was sour as sin. Removing a pint bottle of whiskey from his pants pocket, and backing away, he uncorked it with his teeth to gulp a swallow.

  Then a second.

  To me, it become clear that Mr. Gamp had probable been halfway to mellow when he’d arrived on his mare. So, standing up, I walked to him, took the bottle from his trembling fingers, and poured the remaining whiskey to the Vermont soil. There was a temptation in me to throw that bottle away, as far as I could pitch it. Or smash it. Yet I did neither. I merely handed it back to Mr. Gamp, so he’d keep it for a time.

  I hoped he would remember this day, and how much hurt he’d heaped on a good man.

  Chapter

  2

  “More beans?” Mama asked me.

  My mother, Aunt Carrie, and I were sitting at our kitchen table, at supper. On the big black Acme American six-griddle cookstove, a pot of beans was always simmering on a back burner. When times were easier, there was usual a hunk of sowbelly or fatback in the bean pot, for flavor. But lately, there didn’t seem to be more than beans to eat. Or dandelion greens.

  “Please,” I said, “if we can spare it. Let’s all have some.”

  Neither my mother nor my aunt spooned a second helping to their plates. It wasn’t because they weren’t hungry. Both of them would have starved to prosper me.

  At noon, a meal we Vermonters called dinner, Mama often prepared cold baked-bean sandwiches between generous slabs of her homemade bread. For years, I’d toted those to school. Few offered to trade their sandwiches for mine, yet it didn’t bother me a mite. I was proud of whatever Mama stirred on her stove.

  Maybe the kids at school were just plain too jealous of me to trade. That was my secret smile.

  Earlier, at the Tanner place, I’d ducked my shirt under the pump to rinse away Ben’s blood. Bess had offered to wash it for me. But I thanked her and said there was no need. Mama had made the shirt herself, as she cut and stitched all of my clothes. Kids at school said things about that too, noticing that my shirts were plainer than my eats. We Shakers were Plain People. We needed no frills on our backs or on our plates.

  As I forked in hot beans, Mama and Aunt Carrie seemed to be eyeing my shirt. I smelled questions in the oven. So I squeezed off the first shot.
r />   “No, I didn’t go to school today. I hiked over the hill to Ben’s, to help him with his stud horse.”

  “So,” said Aunt Carrie, in her churchy tone, “you missed your schooling again.”

  “I’ll go soon.”

  Pulling a dollar from out of my pocket, I unfolded it, giving it to Mama. “I earned a dollar. Ben likes my work.”

  Mama didn’t reach out to take it, so Mr. George Washington just lay there on the gray boards, as wrinkled and tired as I felt.

  “Robert,” said my mother, “please go to school tomorrow.”

  “No, not tomorrow. Even though I want to.”

  “How come?” Mama asked me.

  “Well, not because I dislike school in general. I take to most all of it. Except for this guy called William Shakespeare. In English class, we only got one book, so we have to take turns standing up front and reading a play that doesn’t make a speck of sense to me. It’s called As You Like It … and I don’t like it.”

  Mama smiled.

  Aunt Carrie held her ground.

  “Mr. Shakespeare, for my opinion, ought to title his play As You Hate It. I’d be pleasured to give him that idea, for free. The teacher I like so much, Miss Malcolm, told us he died. But if he had to stand up in English class and read that stuff out loud, you’d know what did him in.”

  My mother laughed. “What’s the play about?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said, chewing my beans, “it isn’t about anything … except two brothers, Oliver and Orlando. They’re fixing to sweet up their girlfriends, Celia and … and Rosie. Their main hobby is gallivanting around Mr. Arden’s Forest and touching stones. In fact, this guy Touchstone is also a Chester. On top of all that, there’s a Frederick guy who I think has a dog named Duke.”

  “My,” said my mother, “for a boy who doesn’t attend school regular, you’ve near to mastered it all.”

  Hearing her praise swelled out my chest an inch. Or maybe it was bean gas.

  Tomorrow, I had already decided, As You Like It would have to limp along through Arden’s woods without me. No time to quit doing for Ben Tanner. Today had been bad on him.