A Part of the Sky

  After Mr. Haskell Gamp collected his settled mare and led her in the direction of town, toward Learning, Bess Tanner and I tended her husband. The wounds bled clean. Yet it was plain that Ben needed sewing. But before she threaded her needle, Mrs. Tanner smacked us with a surprise.

  It was hard liquor.

  Bess, I knew, was a solid and fearing Baptist, a white-ribbon lady who didn’t partake or approve of spirits. So, when Bess fetched a glass jug of mountain white, colorless as water, uncorked it, and offered a pull to her husband, I near fainted to her kitchen floor.

  “Drink up, Benjamin,” she said. “Because the Almighty won’t expect you to take sober stitching. And neither do I.”

  Ben drank. I did not. It was certain a shocker to see him do it, because Ben Tanner was as hard-shelled a Baptist as Learning could boast of. Tough hide and tender heart. His woman told him to put himself outside of a second swallow, and he lightened the jug again. Then she placed the handle of a wooden cook spoon crosswise in his mouth.

  “Bite,” said Bess. “Bite it deep.”

  As he sat in a kitchen chair, Ben nodded that he was ready for iodine and thread. And, stitch after pulled-tight and knotted stitch, he bore it as I knew he could. One by each.

  Silently, as I held Ben to the chair, I counted the stitches. He took thirty-seven without a whimper. And I knew it hurt Bess more to piece him together. His white hair was sweaty wet, a shoulder now stained brown with iodine, his face reddened with the pain.

  “You’re not much,” Bess whispered to him as she tied the final, “but you’re all I got.”

  When his wife removed the foamy spoon from his mouth, Ben looked at her, and asked a question in a trembling voice. “Bess, would you please forgive me if I let out a cuss?”

  Touching his face, Bess said, “If this embroidery of mine doesn’t pardon swearing or whiskey, I don’t know whatever do. Cut it loose.”

  With her red and shiny hands, Bess Tanner covered my ears instead of hers. That was when Ben fired off a masterpiece of low language for near to half a minute, without repeating a single sorry word. Nothing new or real fancy. Just a steady string of old favorites.

  “Feel better?” she asked him.

  Forcing a grin, Ben nodded. “It wouldn’t been so bad,” he said to his wife, “except that I always knew how you enjoy needlework.”

  Bess faked a frown.

  The next chore took a spell longer. With Bess under one arm, and me (shirtless) beneath the other, Ben Tanner stumbled upstairs to his bed. We pulled off his boots, stockings, and bloodstained trousers, and eased him careful, reeking of iodine, to a pile of pillows.

  Bess paid me a dollar.

  All this I told to Mama and Aunt Carrie. As they listened without a word, their faces turned serious and spoke how sorry they were that a bad thing had happened to such a sturdy neighbor.

  When I come to the part about the stitches, Mama touched my arm, recalling, as did I, how Ben Tanner’s cow, Apron, tore me up about a year ago trying to drop her calf. Ben had found me and hauled me to home. Afterward, he give me a young pig, Pinky, for birthing a calf out of Apron.

  “Will he be all right?” Mama asked.

  I nodded. “Mr. Tanner’s harder than a rock maple. So I figure he’ll mend and be up and about. But until, best I help out some. A dollar a day is useful bank money. There’s work here to handle as well. Please … please don’t nag or fret me about school. That ol’ schoolhouse will be standing long after Ben Tanner’s put to prone.”

  Mama said, “You can’t do it all, Rob.”

  “No, s’pose not. But I’ll swallow a slab of it. We have to keep our farm. Compared to Mr. Tanner’s spread, ours isn’t so much to look after. All we have is five acres. Not quite that, according to what Papa told me. But it’s ours. And in four more years we’ll own it outright, if’n we keep up payments to the Learning Bank. So stuff that dollar in the teapot.”

  “We’ll help,” Aunt Carrie said. “Your mother and I will do and do and do.” She turned to her younger sister. “Won’t we, Lucy?”

  Mama nodded. “If we try our best, angels can do no better.”

  I took their hands. They felt small yet strong as spruce. There was bark aplenty on my two little ladies.

  “Say,” I said, “it’s time for a laugh. We agreed we’d have a good giggle every day. And believe me, I got one to share.”

  Mama smiled. “I could use a chuckler.”

  “It was something Ben Tanner said, just after Mr. Gamp left with his mare. Ben was lying there in the dirt. He got to his feet and helped me box General back in his stall. His face was twisted like taffy. So I asked him a dumb question about what it felt like to be bit so hard by a horse.”

  “What did he say?” Mama asked. “That is,” she added with a wink, “if you can repeat it in front of Shaker ladies.”

  “I’d asked … did it hurt? And all Ben said was … it gits your attention.”

  Chapter

  3

  Soon as I touched her teats, I knew that I wouldn’t be getting very much. Nary a drop.

  “Daisy,” I told our milk cow, “you’re drying up.”

  It was her usual morning milking time. Five o’clock. For a week now, Daisy’s bag become smaller and softer. A time had passed since she’d dropped her last calf. Daisy was no longer young. The worry that she mightn’t again freshen nagged at me.

  Standing up, I patted our Holstein’s warm side. “It’s all right, old girl. You done us plenty for years. You’ve give. And allowed us to sell all your calfs for bank money.”

  Kicking the milking stool to one side, then dousing the lantern, I rinsed out the pail under the yard pump and hung it to its nail. Then I broke open the stanchion to turn Daisy back out to meadow.

  Walking toward the house, I felt shameful that there’d be no milk for Mama’s coffee, or for Aunt Carrie’s. They would have to suffer it black. Ahead of me, a frail yellow lantern light in the kitchen said that both women were up, stoking the stove, fixing breakfast. I hoped it’d be fried apples and corn bread. Over my shoulder, I looked back to our little gray barn. How would we afford another cow? We should’ve kept Daisy’s last calf. But it got sold off before Papa died, for ten dollars; part of the bank payment. Into Mama’s teapot.

  After breakfast, I went out to the meadow to fetch Solomon, our Holstein ox. Like usual, he grazed near Daisy.

  “Come on, Solomon. It’s May. The ground’s free of frost, so today you and I have to turn the cornfield soil for seeding.”

  Leading him to the barn was no problem, as my hand on one curving horn was all it took. Our ox was as gentle as he was burly. Even though he weighed closer to two tons than one. About 3200 pounds.

  I couldn’t remember a time without Solomon. He was always there, working, sweating, leaning to his single yoke without fit or falter. Solid as barn timber, and more oak than animal. With a shrug of my shoulders, I don’t guess I could imagine his age. Close to twenty.

  Yoked, our big black-and-white ox coasted the plow on its side with no effort, as it was sliding along easy on the dewy meadow grass. In the early morning light, tiny silver spider webs lay every few feet. It was like looking down at a starry sky. Crop ground wasn’t meadowland. Meadow was pasture; its turf was a green quilt of short mounded grass for grazing. But crop acres lay brown and barren, freckled by last season’s corn stubble, like a man needing a shave.

  Solomon stood patient while I righted the plow to set the blade. Beneath my bare feet, the ground felt damp, soft, and yielding.

  Papa said the earth was a loving woman who wanted seed. Kneeling, I picked up a clod of moist loam and balled it. The soil smelled cool and friendly. Even though it dirtied my hands, as a Shaker I truly respected it; so many ways it fed our family.

  Other than almost two acres for hay, we had two acres to plow for a field-corn crop, silage, so plowing didn’t use better than five or six hours of steady work. From a six o’clock first light until noon.

  Solomon
pulled. Behind his mighty hindquarters, the silvery plowshare swam through the brown land smooth as a shiner fish. To help guide Solomon, I did something more’n unusual; I fixed a brace of long black-leather reins to the outer tips of his yoke, right and left, and tied the two loose ends behind my back. There was no way to grip them. Both my hands had to guide the curved plow handles.

  For forward motion, I barked out a “Hup” to pull, and a “Ho” to whoa him. Like any trained Vermont ox, Solomon would “Gee” right, and “Haw” left.

  Yet that wasn’t all Solomon understood. Papa always claimed that he was as wise as King Solomon in our Bible. For me, Solomon seemed to know what to do and how to do it, and suffer the added chore of breaking in a clumsy boy for a workmate.

  “Last row,” I later told him under a high sun.

  Solomon snorted, as if to say he blessed the idea of a noonday feed with a yoke off, beneath a meadow elm. Some farmers don’t unyoke at noon. Papa always did. He said it was a Shaker’s way, to honor work and all workers. Maybe that was the cause that we Pecks seemed as dear to Solomon as he was to us.

  But we didn’t quite complete the final furrow. Solomon stopped and wouldn’t budge. “Yup,” I commanded him. No response. So I repeated the order in a louder voice, trying to make my thirteen years sound something like Papa’s sixty. “Heeeee-yup!”

  Solomon didn’t take another step.

  Instead, he mere lowered his head, as though the yoke was sudden too weighty to heft, and fell. Turning loose of the plow handles and then slipping out of the leather rein loop, I hurried to where his big head rested on the yet unplowed ground. He was alive, still breathing, but I sudden realized that old Solomon wouldn’t be pulling a plow, or a wagon, another inch. The ox’s eyes were open. But then, looking closer at them, I saw the graying clouds of winter, and age.

  Solomon was near to blind.

  Once, and only one time, he turned his soft face toward me, as if to tell me that he was sorry not to finish the furrow. Hurriedly, I yanked out the pair of cotter keys, loosened the bow, and pulled the heavy yoke off his neck. Slowly, barely moving, his proud head lowered to the ground as if to grace its goodness. One deep breath, and then nothing more.

  I forgot about my plowing.

  All I could make myself do was kneel in the dirt and hold his giant head close to my sweaty-wet shirt. His heat matched the late morning.

  “Solomon.” I whispered his name very softly, as if spoken to a violet, so that only God could hear. There was no way to know if oxen have souls. But if any ox did, it was Solomon. Touching him, stroking the sweaty curls on his massive head, I wanted to tell him that to have worked with him wasn’t a task. It was a privilege.

  Looking to my left, I could see our little gray shack of a house. Home. Yet inside, Mama and Carrie would be fixing dinner, for noon, and then coming outside to locate me. They’d see us here for certain. But I couldn’t allow that, because the sight would hit them too hard.

  I ran. Up, over the hill, all the way down to Mr. and Mrs. Tanner’s big, prosperous farm, to pound at their front door with a mud-stained fist. Mrs. Tanner answered my knock. The door opened. She read my face.

  “Rob,” she said. “What is it?”

  “It’s our ox,” I panted. “Solomon’s down. And I can’t abide having Mama or Aunt Carrie see him lying so still and turning cold. They both knowed him a spate longer than they knowed me. So, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to yoke up your two and borrow ’em long enough to drag Solomon off into the trees, out of sight. I can shovel a hole for him, then cover him up proper, under earth. May I please?” I sucked in a breath. “Please. Before all the flies and ants and crows come to peck at him.”

  However, before Bess Tanner could answer me, it hit me that I’d failed to ask about Ben, and how he was mending.

  “Manners,” I heard Papa’s voice tell me. “A man begins with his manners.”

  It was one of his longest sermons. Haven Peck was hardly a man of many words. Yet, at the rare moments he spoke, people (meaning me) seemed to listen up and record it.

  “How’s Ben?” I asked Bess, sounding like a feeble apology.

  “More ornery than a wet cat,” Bess said. “If you’d cotton to brighten my day, don’t mention his name. He’s the most unpatient patient that Satan ever afflicted.” Bess sighed. “Enough of that. I’m sorry about your ox. Now then, will you be able to yoke Bob and Bib by your lonesome?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have to.”

  “Come,” she said, heading for their barn. “I’ll show you where the yoke is. And,” she paused, “perhaps lend you a hand. Their new yoke is solid hickory. Ben could barely manage it himself, and you know he’s sturdy as a lumber-camp outhouse.”

  We almost trotted.

  “Rob, go out meadow and bring the oxen in. Remember now, Bob’s always to the left. Bib right. If you lead ’em, that’s how. Walk between ’em and they’ll respond comfortable. Hear?”

  “I hear.”

  On the grass of meadow pasture, oxen will usual stand in the same fashion they pull. Bob, I figured, was grazing with Bib, his twin, on his right. Neither was full-out growed, but at over a year, both be ample large. Bob slightly blacker. They knew me. After all, the first pull in Bob’s life was when, up on the ridge, I’d pulled him out of Apron’s rump.

  Bess helped me yoke, and locate a long metal drag chain. Thanking her, I headed her oxen up and over the ridge to our farm.

  It took time. Papa once said, “When a man tries to hurry oxen, he only hurries hisself.”

  Mama and Carrie beat me to where Solomon lay cooling. Both of them were stooping near to him, to touch him a good-bye.

  “I’m sorry you had to witness him,” I said.

  Mama nodded. “Soon’s we did, Carrie and I reasoned where you’d gone to, and why.”

  It wasn’t an easy pull for Bob and Bib, because of Solomon’s mature size. Yet the two young Holsteins did for me, willingly, with little urging. We only had two shovels. But my mother and aunt turned stubborn about Solomon’s grave and wouldn’t allow me to dig lonesome. We took turns. You’ll never see women work earth as they done that day.

  Nobody spoke.

  The three of us dug in a silent acceptance.

  Then, after Ben’s oxen dragged Solomon at and into the hole, we spaded dirt over him, adding two crossed twigs for a marker.

  But we couldn’t turn our backs on the grave and walk out of our little woods. 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.”

  Chapter

  4

  “Sit still,” my mother ordered.

  “I don’t need a haircut. Not tonight.”

  Our kitchen was supper hot. Stuffed into Mr. Tanner’s black church shoes and Will Henry’s out-growed blue suit (a gift), I felt hotter.

  “And do stop scratching yourself,” said Aunt Matty, who had come to help prepare me for battle. “You’ll disturb the lice.”

  “It’s my underwear. It itches like it’s alive and crawling. Going to this dance weren’t my idea. Becky Lee Tate promised me that if I took her, she’d somehow coach me so’s I won’t flunk English.”

  Years ago, Papa had warned me, “Never go into a kitchen where women are canning.” Well, these three women were doing worse, making me boil like a clamped mason jar of processing peas.

  Behind me, clicking her sewing scissors at my thatch of hair, Mama
sighed. “Your first dance.”

  “Wrong. My last. I could throttle Will Henry for outliving these duds. Maybe I ought to stand out in a cornfield and play a scarecrow. Besides, I’ve never danced a step. So I hope Becky is wearing shin guards and hard-toe mill shoes.”

  Mama said, “It’ll test her courage.”

  I winced.

  “You’ll have fun,” Mama said, snipping another lock so it would fall inside my collar.

  “Will ought to be taking her. After all, it’s sort of his suit. Or used to be. I bet that Grange Hall will be hotter than the Devil’s drawers.”

  Aunt Matty, who wasn’t really my aunt, snickered. Aunt Carrie (who was) didn’t. Mama pinched my ear.

  “Robert,” she said, “enough of that kind of talking.”

  “Sorry, ladies. It’s because my shirt is already sweaty, and I haven’t danced a square inch. Mama, do you have to chop my hair? Nobody’s going to notice.”

  “Miss Becky might.”

  “Stand up,” said Aunt Carrie, approaching me, “so I can right your necktie.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Well,” she said, fussing at me, “you’ve got the little end hanging lower than the big end. And your knot’s too bashful.”

  “Bashful?”

  “Yes. The knot’s trying to hide underneath one of your collar points. It’s too loose. Here, I’ll snug it up.”

  “You’re choking me. How’ll I ever kick up a polka, or whatever, if I can’t breathe?”

  “For somebody short of breath,” Mama told me, “you certain say more than vespers.”

  There I stood, working up a fever, shifting my weight from one borrowed shoe to the other, with Aunt Carrie tugging my tie, and Mama behind, whacking away at my hair. Aunt Matty circled us in a supervising manner, like a cat ready to spring. All this, plus one more worry.

  “Golly, maybe Becky is going to recognize Will Henry’s suit. Suppose she does? I’ll die.”