Fields of Home (10 page)

In some ways, the haying went better than I expected it to for the first few days. Grandfather worked most of the forenoon with Uncle Levi and me while we shocked the hay in the orchard. He never asked how the raking had been done, and we didn’t tell him. In the afternoon, when we were ready to haul, Millie put on a pair of overalls, made a jug of switchel—Jamaica ginger and water, sweetened with molasses—and came out to help us.

I had thought I was going to show Grandfather something about pitching hay but, little as he was, he could swing up as big a forkful as I could. And he started swinging them just as fast as he could go. “Come on, Ralphie! Come on!” he sang out as Millie stopped the rack beside the first row of shocks. “I and you’ll show ’em what kind of logs makes wide shingles!” Then he jabbed his fork into a shock, crouched, levered the fork handle across his bent knee, and sent the load sailing over the high rail of the hayrack. It was hardly off the fork before he was trotting toward the next.

My blisters were beginning to heal pretty well and, with my new gloves, they didn’t bother me much in handling a pitchfork. I wasn’t going to let Grandfather get ahead of me, so I jabbed my fork deep, pitched, and ran for the next shock. We went neck and neck for the first half dozen, and then I came to a big one. I either had to take it all at one forkful or, if I took two, let Grandfather get ahead of me. I caught the near edge of the shock with my fork tines, folded it up, and rammed the fork hard into center. Then, when I sprang back, bent my knee, and threw my full weight on the fork handle, it broke in the middle.

Out of breath as he was, Grandfather scolded me till his face was almost purple, called me a tarnal fool boy a dozen times, and went off to the barn for another fork. Uncle Levi was raking scatterings. As soon as Grandfather had gone, he pulled his rake up beside me, and said, “Cussed good thing you broke that fork handle. If you hadn’t, Thomas would like as not have killed hisself afore he got to the end of the row. Always took pride that he could outpitch ary man in a hayfield. Recollect what I told you, ‘Slow and easy goes far in a day’? You pitch first-rate, but take it easy and let him run off from you. He won’t go more’n two–three shocks afore he cools down; just has to prove to you that he’s a better man than you be. Ain’t that so, Millie?”

Millie had been building load as Grandfather and I pitched to her. Her face, deep in her sunbonnet, was dripping sweat, and she was still breathing hard when she said, “’Tain’t hard for him to prove with ninety-nine men out of a hundred. Take his fork, Ralph, and let’s get this load on afore he comes back.” Her voice wasn’t a bit mean, and it was the first time she had called me Ralph without being sarcastic.

I only had the rack loaded a little way above the rail when Grandfather came back. He passed me a heavy, long-handled fork, and as I took it, he told me to quit trying to show off before I broke everything on the place all to smithereens. I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t change my pace from the way I’d been going before he came. For the rest of the row, Grandfather pitched three shocks to my two. Then he stood his fork against a tree, and said, “Load’s getting a little high for your old grampa, Ralphie. You throw on eight or ten or a dozen more shocks, and fetch it on to the barn. I’ll go ahead and get some the culch out of the barn floor.”

When we got to the barn, I found why Grandfather wanted me to build the load so high. Instead of using a horsefork, the way they always did in Colorado, we had to unload by hand. But that wasn’t all. The hay had to be handled three or four times. I pitched off the rack to Uncle Levi on the low mow above the tie-up, he pitched to Grandfather on the next higher mow, and he pitched to Millie, who stowed away in the high mow above the driveway. Unloading was twice as hard as loading on in the field. With the hayrack built the way it was, the whole bottom part of the load was tangled and matted together. To tear it loose with a pitchfork was like pulling stumps.

On the second trip, we tried to get Grandfather to build load, let Millie rake scatterings, and Uncle Levi pitch with me, but he wouldn’t do it. For half a dozen shocks, he’d tear into it as if he were throwing dirt on a prairie fire, then he’d either go off to see how the new bees were doing, or remember that he had to set a trap in a ground-hog hole. He was away and back two or three times to each load, and it was nearly sundown before we had the third one pulled into the barn. Both Grandfather and Uncle Levi were too tired to do the unloading, Millie had to cook supper, and I wasn’t a bit sorry when Grandfather said, “Unhitch your hosses, Ralphie! We done a good job of work today, and we’ll leave her set right where she is till morning. Can’t go to hauling of mornings, anyways, till after the sun’s high enough to suck up the dew.”

I saw Annie when I went for the cows that evening. She had on a pink dress and, for a minute, I thought she’d spied me sitting there by the base of the big beech tree. Her face turned that way just as she went out of sight behind the woods at the foot of the hill, and I could have sworn that her hand waved a little.

11

The Horsefork Disaster

T
HE
second day of hay hauling didn’t go as well as the first. It was hot. There was a little breeze in the orchard, but the barn was stifling. It took twice as long to pitch a load off and stow it in the mows as it took to pitch it on in the field. We’d have to stop and rest three or four times during each unloading, and every one of us would be wringing wet by the time we reached the bottom of the rack.

Grandfather grew more crochety as the forenoon went on. During the first unloading, he called down to me only two or three times about pitching either too fast or too slow. By our third load, just before dinner time, he wouldn’t let me alone five minutes at a stretch. If I happened to get hold of a big forkful, he’d yell at me to stop trying to show off before I broke every fork handle on the place. And if the forkful was small, he’d scold me for dawdling.

Grandfather would neither rake scatterings nor build load in the field. During each loading, he’d come to the field two or three times, stay about ten minutes and go away. Each time he came, he’d take Uncle Levi’s fork, pitch hay as fast as he could swing it, and scold me for being too slow. I didn’t say anything back when he scolded, and I tried not to change my pace, but before he’d leave the field, I’d be so furious that every muscle would be quivering.

Millie didn’t help with the last unloading of the forenoon, but went to the house to get dinner. When we went in to eat, there was only fried salt pork, boiled potatoes, and johnnycake. Uncle Levi looked the table over when he sat down, and said to Millie, “If you’d told me this morning you was out of meat, I’d have killed a hen while Ralph was doing the chores.”

“Ain’t nothing the matter with salt pork,” Grandfather snapped at him. “Et a-plenty of it whenst you was a boy to home, didn’t you? Never heard tell of nobody starving whenst they had salt pork to eat, did you? Eggs is eighteen cents a dozen, and the hens is all laying.”

Uncle Levi didn’t answer, but he ate only one small potato and a couple of slices of pork. No one said another word till the meal was finished. It was the first dinner since Uncle Levi had been there that the red rooster hadn’t flown up onto the window sill behind him and tucked-tucked for something to eat. As Uncle Levi pushed his chair back from the table, he grumbled, “Even a cussed rooster knows better than to come to a dinner of salt pork in haying time.” Then, as we were leaving the kitchen, he turned to Grandfather and said, sharply, “How do you expect Ralph to hold the pace you’re trying to set him, with nothing but salt pork in his belly?” Grandfather flared right back at him, but I didn’t want to be there while they were wrangling, so I went to the barn and hitched up the horses.

The afternoon was hot and muggy. Millie and Uncle Levi tried to get Grandfather to slow down a little in his pitching, but they only made him worse. Each time he came to the field, he’d grab the fork out of Uncle Levi’s hands, race into the pitching, and yell at me for being shiftless and lazy.

At the starting of the second load, Grandfather made me so mad that I didn’t care if he did kill himself. I wasn’t going to hold a steady pace any longer and let him keep yelling at me for dawdling. I shoved my fork deep into the shocks, and pitched as hard as I could. The faster I worked, the louder Grandfather yelled at me, till Uncle Levi called, “Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder you ain’t drove the boy away a’ready.”

Grandfather was winded, and his voice was squeaky when he yelled back, “Mary sent him down here for me to make a man out of him, and, by thunder, I cal’late on doing it.” Then he tore into the pitching again. Instead of taking each shock clean, he’d grab a forkful off the top, heave it onto the rack, and shout, “Gitap!” at the horses. I had to go just as fast as he, or be left behind. Then I jabbed my fork too deep into a big shock, sprung the handle too hard, and broke it.

Grandfather was beside the yella colt when I broke the fork handle. He jumped up and down, and shouted so loud that he set the old horse dancing and shaking his head. Then the colt braced his feet, and went into a balk. I leaned on my fork handle and waited while Grandfather yelled, “Gitap! Gitap! Gitap, you tarnal fool hoss!” He grabbed a bridle rein, tugged on it, and shouted into the yella colt’s face, “Gitap! Gitap, you worthless, good-for-nothing crow bait! Gitap, I tell you!”

Then I did the most foolish thing I could have done. I stepped over and said, “If you’ll let me quiet him down a bit, I think I can make him stop balking.”

Grandfather yanked his hat off, threw it on the ground, and shouted, “Tarnal fool boy! Never in all my born days seen such an all-fired know-it-all boy! Stand out of the way, I tell you! What you think you could do to stop a horse a-balking?”

“Wire his ears together,” I said. And I said it quietly.

“
Wire his ears together!
” Grandfather stormed. “Don’t you never let me catch you wiring a critter’s ears together!”

I was mad enough that I had to be careful not to shout back, but I kept my voice down, and said, “All right, I won’t. What do you want me to do now?”

“
Do! Do!
Start fetching hay to the rack! What in time and tarnation you cal’lating on doing? Time flies, I tell you! Levi! Give Ralphie a hand fetching hay whilst I go to the barn for another fork! Millie, go get your victuals ready! Tarnal colt’s likely as not to balk till sundown!”

When Grandfather was nearly to the barn, Uncle Levi stood his fork down, and said, “Don’t let Thomas rile you no more’n you can help, Ralph. When he’s tired and his nerves is jangled, he ain’t accountable for what he says. Don’t mean a cussed thing by it. Something I can’t ravel out is tormenting him bad.”

“I’m sorry I broke another fork handle,” I said. “I’ve been trying to pitch as well as I could.”

“Ain’t nothing the matter with your pitching,” Uncle Levi told me. “It’s good, and Thomas knows it. I’d give a cookie to know what’s eating him. Calc’late you could get that cussed yella colt to stop balking?”

“Not without doing something to make him forget he is balking,” I said. “I think I’d have to put a wire on his ears.”

“Don’t calc’late Thomas could catch us at this distance from the barn,” Uncle Levi said and winked at me. “Seems to me I seen a piece of wire a-hanging on the colt’s harness.”

Uncle Levi pitched hay just the way I liked to; steady but not rushing. Within a few minutes after I put the wire on the yella colt’s ears, he forgot his balking and went back to work. I’d taken off the wire, and we had the rack piled high when Grandfather came back to the field. Neither of us saw him coming till, from right behind us, he sang out, “Now you see, Ralphie! What did your old grampa tell you? Can’t nobody do nothing with the yella colt, ’cepting to leave him be till he makes up his own mind. Ruin him for all his lifetime if ever you’d go to putting wire on his ears. Levi, you climb up and build load whilst I and Ralphie pitches to you.”

For the rest of the loading, Grandfather pitched without rushing. At the unloading, I heard him wrangle with Uncle Levi several times, but he only scolded me once, and that was for pitching too fast. When we were finished, and he came down from the mow, he was so tired his feet dragged.

Uncle Levi stayed at the barn to help me unharness and feed the horses. He grumbled to himself most of the time, and I could see that he was as tired as Grandfather. I told him so, and said I’d take care of the horses, but he almost snapped at me, “’Tain’t the work! ’Tain’t the work! There’s times Thomas wears me thinner’n a cobweb. Oughtn’t to quarrel with him; he ain’t well, but, by hub, there’s times he riles me.”

I think he was sorry as soon as he’s said it. While I was hanging up Old Nell’s harness, he stood with both hands crammed deep in his overalls’ pockets, and said, “Man shouldn’t be trying to work in the field at Thomas’s age. Leastways, not a man that’s got the malaria. Them of us that’s never had it don’t know how cussed cantankerous it can make a man feel.”

Grandfather sounded plenty cantankerous when he shouted from the house, “What in thunderation you dawdling around at now? The victuals is getting cold!”

The only difference between supper and dinner was that Millie had baked a couple of apple pies. Uncle Levi didn’t say a word when he looked the table over, but went up to his room. He was gone two or three minutes, and when he came down, he was sort of tasting his tongue. He passed Millie the bottle, partly full of whiskey, and said, “Here, I calc’late Thomas better have an appetizer afore he tackles this kind of victuals.”

Grandfather said he wasn’t sick and he wasn’t tired, and that he wouldn’t touch a drop of the hot toddy Millie brought him. He did, though, then he ate a pretty good supper, and went to bed.

I was just leaving the barn to get the cows when I heard a squawking at the henhouse. I thought it might be a fox or a skunk that was after the hens, so I grabbed a stick and raced back through the barnyard. As I rounded the corner of the barn, Uncle Levi was going toward the chopping block with a Rhode Island Red hen in each hand.

Uncle Levi had gone to bed by the time I’d brought the cows in from the pasture, and the kitchen was dark when I’d finished my chores. The only lighted lamp was out in the summer kitchen, where Millie was picking the hens. I turned a bushel basket over, sat on it, and began helping her pick. Neither of us said anything for several minutes. Then Millie asked, “Who learned you to pitch hay and drive hosses?”

“My father,” I told her.

It was several more minutes before she said, “Proud of your pitching, ain’t you?”

“Neither proud nor ashamed,” I said.

I didn’t look up until I noticed that Millie had stopped picking. When I did, she was looking straight into my eyes, and if her face showed any expression, I couldn’t see it. “You’re good, for a boy, and you know it, and Thomas knows it. Don’t rub it in.”

“I’m not,” I told her.

“You was this afternoon,” she said.

“Only for a few minutes; after he’d called me lazy.”

“Know why he done it?”

“To get every ounce of work out of me that he could.”

“Grow up,” she said, without any change in her voice.

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” I said.

“You will, time you’re his age and have to watch a young boy best you in the face of your own folks.”

“What am I supposed to do,” I asked, “let him beat me and then call me lazy and shiftless?”

“Till he cal’lates you think he’s got you bested. Names don’t hurt nobody. Thomas ain’t going to let on to hisself nor nobody else that he’s bested till he drops dead. You want to kill him, or let him row at you for a few minutes? I’ll wager ’twouldn’t be more than a few times.”

I looked back at the hen, and picked a few feathers. After I’d had a couple of minutes to think, I asked, “Where did you learn to make such good apple pies?”

Millie began to pick feathers again. All she said was, “I got two oranges saved out from them Levi fetched. Want one afore you go to bed?”

When Millie called me the next morning, there was a pink glow in the eastern sky. By the time I’d finished milking, it looked as if the woods beyond Hall’s hill were afire. Hens were oiling their feathers in the dooryard, and swallows skimmed low across the uncut hayfields. At breakfast, Grandfather snapped at me, “Eat your victuals, Ralphie! Get the hosses out quick as ever you can! There’s a tarnal hard rain a-coming, and five loads of hay still in the field.”

With rain coming, I expected Grandfather to be awfully hard to get along with, but he wasn’t. It worked just the way Millie had told me it would. I tried to act as if I were doing my best, but took two pitches for each shock till Grandfather was well ahead of me. Now that I understood, it was sort of fun to watch him tear into the pitching, and hear him yell at me to stop dawdling and pitch hay man-fashion. Within twenty minutes, he stopped rushing, and pitched steadily a good part of the forenoon. Whenever he got tired, Millie or Uncle Levi found something for him to do away from the hayfield.

We had a light shower just before noon, but the sun came out bright and the tops of the shocks were dry by the time we’d finished eating. Millie had a good dinner. She had stewed the hens with carrots and potatoes, and the top of the bowl was covered with dumplings. We were right in the middle of eating when the old red rooster flew up onto the window sill and tuck-tuck-tucked. Uncle Levi wouldn’t give him any chicken. He said it would be a sin to make a cannibal of him, but he did feed him nearly a whole dumpling.

The rain held off till the sun had dipped down behind the pines on the ridge. The last load was so high I could hardly reach the top with a long-handled fork, and there were just two shocks left in the field when the sky seemed to open and the rain came down in torrents. Before we got to the barn, we were drenched.

It was nearly dark when I’d finished my chores and took the milk to the house, and it was raining steadily, but Grandfather was doing something at the beehives. Uncle Levi had to go down and argue with him before he’d come to the house. He would neither go to bed nor put on the dry clothes Millie had laid out for him, but sat shivering in front of the kitchen stove for more than an hour. He was sure the rain was going to last for several days and was fretting about its holding up the haying. Twice, he asked Uncle Levi how many days were left before the Fourth of July.

The next morning it was still raining. The sky was like a gray bowl turned down on the saucer of the valley. Grandfather had chills and fever, so he had to stay in bed, but Uncle Levi and I hauled the old mowing machine into the carriage house and went to work on it. The wheels were the only things about it that weren’t completely worn out.

We’d never had a forge on our ranch in Colorado, and I didn’t know much about blacksmithing, but Uncle Levi did. He never hurried, and he didn’t care how long a job took, but when he’d finished with it, every cog and bearing fitted perfectly. Besides that, he liked to show me how to do things, and I liked to have him. We spent all day, and until late in the evening, on the mower; regrinding gears, refitting bearings, sharpening knives and replacing broken ones; soda welding the pitman head, and making a new tongue of dry white oak.