Fields of Home (25 page)

27

Butter Making

T
AKING
care of the milk after I got it to the house was about as much work as milking. After supper every night, I had to scald crocks and pans, strain the milk, and set it in the cellar to rise. Then I had to bring up the batch from the day before, skim it, wash the pans and bowls, and put the cream in covered crocks.

The night Grandfather made the trade with ’Bijah Swale, I noticed that mold was growing on the cream in one of the crocks. At first, I was going to skim it off, and then I got an idea. If I showed it to Grandfather, he’d see that the cream would spoil unless it was churned into butter right away, and he might let Annie come up to help me.

It was nearly ten o’clock when I found the cream, but there was still a light under Grandfather’s door, so I knocked, and told him about it. “Gorry sakes! Gorry sakes alive!” he said in a wide-awake voice. “By fire, I and you’ll have to do a churning afore we go to the field in the morning. Did ever you make butter, Ralphie?”

I told him I’d worked the dasher for Mother, but that was all I knew about churning. “Ain’t nothing to it! Ain’t nothing to it, at all, Ralphie!” he called back through the door. “Come morning, and your old grampa’ll learn you all you’ll need to know. By gorry, I’m a-getting a far piece ahead of you on raking up them rocks. Cal’late I might fetch the butter off to Lewiston soon’s ever we’re done with the churning.”

At supper, we’d eaten the last scrap of food Annie had cooked for us. In the morning, Grandfather was so anxious to get started on the butter that he wouldn’t let me stop to make biscuits. He cooked the breakfast and got the churning ready while I did the chores, but he didn’t have very good luck. He usually forgot to salt the oatmeal, but that morning he must have salted it at least three times, and he spilled cream all over the floor when he filled the churn.

“Gorry sakes alive! Salter’n Lot’s wife!” Grandfather spluttered when he tasted the oatmeal. “What in time and tarnation did you go and put extra salt into it for? I salted the water afore ever I stirred in the oats!”

I had to remind him that the kettle wasn’t even on the stove when I went to the barn, and that he had the oatmeal all dished up before I came back into the kitchen. “What’s the odds? What’s the odds? Salt never hurt no man,” he snapped. “Put plenty sugar on and you won’t never taste the salt.”

A pound of sugar wouldn’t have covered up the salt in a bowl of that oatmeal. Grandfather tried two or three more spoonfuls, but it nearly gagged him, and there wasn’t another thing in the house to eat, except salt pork and raw potatoes. “Gorry! Gorry sakes!” he sort of gasped, and looked out toward the pantry. “Ain’t a stray piece of pie or one of them little cupcakes a-laying roundabouts, is there, Ralphie? Gorry! This stuff would turn a man’s in’ards into tripe.”

“No, there isn’t a bite of anything left,” I told him, “but I think I could get Annie to . . . ”

“Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!” Grandfather half shouted. “Don’t need no neighbor women folks a-snooping ’round here. Ain’t nothing a man can’t do for hisself if he’s a-mind to. You go to fetching that churn of cream to butter. whilst I cook up another mess of porridge. There ain’t no time for dawdling. I cal’late there’s two more churnfuls of cream in the cellar.”

The churn was a tall wooden cylinder, a little wider at the bottom than at the top. It had a loose lid, with a round hole in the middle. A dasher handle, with crossed paddles at the bottom, stuck through the hole, and the churning was done by thumping the dasher up and down. Grandfather had filled the churn so full that cream pumped out of the hole and around the lid when I started thumping. “Take care! Take care!” he snapped at me from the stove. “Butter’s twenty-eight cents! Don’t go to heaving it all over Kingdom-come!”

I cut down the length of the stroke and the speed of the dasher, but kept it going up and down, up and down. When one arm ached, I changed to the other, but there was no change in the feel of the cream. Every time I shifted the dasher from one hand to the other, Grandfather would ask, “Ain’t it come? Ain’t it come yet, Ralphie?” Then he’d leave the oatmeal, come over, and peek under the lid of the churn.

After the fourth or fifth peek, he snapped, “Stand back! Stand back! Leave your old grampa have a-holt of that stick. He’ll fetch it ’round in a jiffy!”

Grandfather fetched it all right. He grabbed the dasher out of my hand, and started it going like a triphammer. Cream spurted from the top of the churn, spread like an open umbrella, and went all over us and the floor. “Wastin’! Wastin’!” Grandfather shouted. “Why in thunderation didn’t you tell me ’twas brimming full? Oh, well, what’s done is done. Scoop it up, Ralphie! ’Twill all make good hog’s victuals.”

It wasn’t a pleasant morning. Grandfather blamed me for letting the second kettle of oatmeal burn. I was so empty I was shaking, and, by ten o’clock, the cream looked just as it did when we first started churning. Grandfather had tried putting cold water and warm water and soda and vinegar into it, but nothing would make the butter come. After he’d raised Cain with me for not doing the skimming right, he let me go down to Littlehales and get Annie. Before I went, he told me, “Understand me now! This ain’t for nothing but butter making. Don’t you let me catch that girl a-messing ’round the victuals. Wastin’! Wastin’! Eggs is eighteen cents!”

I hadn’t had a chance to take the cows to pasture before we started the churning that morning. As Annie and I came up the road from her house, we saw Grandfather driving them up the lane by the orchard. He had his hands folded behind his back, was walking slowly, and Old Bess was following right behind his heels.

“Good heavens!” Annie said, when she first looked into the churn. “No wonder the butter wouldn’t make! Didn’t you know any better than to fill a churn brim full? Cream has to have room to slop and splash if the butter’s ever going to make.”

“Then we should have had butter by six o’clock this morning,” I told her. “We’ve had cream slopped and splashed all over the kitchen. Grandfather even got it in his whiskers.”

It’s strange the way cream will turn to butter for a woman when it won’t for a man. All Annie did was to dip out a little cream, give the dasher a few beats, and say, “There! It’s beginning to come. Now you put some elbow grease into the churning, and we’ll have butter.”

She was as right as we’d been wrong. I could feel the difference when I first took hold of the dasher and, within a few minutes, there was a big lump of butter sloshing around in the churn. I had never thought I liked buttermilk, but I drank more than a quart of it while Annie was kneading the lump on the butter board. Bright yellow flakes floated thick on the top of the glass, and it left my mouth feeling clean and tart.

Annie had started me churning on the second batch of butter when Grandfather came in through the summer kitchen. “Gorry sakes alive!” he sang out, when he saw Annie working the big yellow lump on the board. “Gorry sakes, Annie girl, how’d you fetch it so quick?”

I was afraid she’d say the same thing to Grandfather that she’d said to me, and caught my breath to try to head her off, but I didn’t have to. “Oh, you had it just about all done before I got here,” she laughed. “My! You had a lot of cream saved up, Mr. Gould. It will take us half the afternoon to get it all churned and printed.”

“Gorry sakes! Gorry sakes!” Grandfather mumbled. “Was cal’lating on fetching it off to the city this afternoon. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. Where’s my spectacles at, Ralphie? Didn’t I see something in the paper ’bout an auction over to Topsham today? Still four empty stanchions in the tie-up, ain’t there? Cal’late I’ll have to put off taking the butter till morning.”

“Are you going bright and early?” I asked, as I passed him his glasses.

“Crack o’dawn! Cal’late to be on the road afore sunup!”

“Then do you want me to pick some of the sweet apples for you to take along?”

“By fire! Like to skipped my mind! Pick all you can of ’em, Ralphie. There’s bushel baskets in the carriage-house attic. Gorry sakes! Ought to fetch fifty, sixty cents a bushel this season of the year.”

Grandfather stood peering at the paper for a few minutes, then muttered, “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. Ain’t going to be no milk cows to this auction. Oh, well, what’s the odds? Cal’late I might as well attend it anyways. Might happen I could stir up a good trade for another day.” A few minutes later, he drove Old Nell out of the dooryard.

The sound of the wheels had hardly died away before Annie called from the pantry. “I’ll have this batch all printed out in a few minutes, and then I’ll get some dinner started. I wonder why Mr. Gould went away without waiting for his dinner.”

The first thing that came into my head was what Grandfather had said about ’Bijah Swale going to auctions for the free victuals. The next, was what he’d said about my not letting Annie cook. I was trying to find some nice way to tell her, when I happened to remember that he hadn’t said she couldn’t cook; he’d only said not to let him catch her messing with the victuals. So I just called back, “Grandfather often goes to auctions without waiting for his dinner.” I didn’t even say anything about saving eggs when she made an omelette with six of them. But as soon as we’d eaten, I did take the swill out to the hogs.

Annie and I finished the butter by two o’clock. There was fifty-four pounds of it. When we had it all set away in the cellar to cool, she helped me pick the apples. The afternoon was about as nice as the first part of the morning had been bad. We talked about Colorado, and the high school at Lisbon Falls; and about strawberries and tomatoes and butter.

It was while we were talking about butter that I told Annie I thought Millie was working in a mill up at Lewiston. I told her that Grandfather had watched all the people coming out of the mill gates two or three times, but he’d never been able to find Millie.

“Why does he watch the gates?” Annie asked me. “Why doesn’t he go to the different mill offices? They keep payrolls in the offices, and have the names of everybody who works there written down in alphabetical order. My Aunt Susan used to keep the payroll in one of the mills. It only takes a minute or two for looking up a name, and in one afternoon, Mr. Gould could go to every office in Lewiston.”

When the sun was dipping down toward the top of the pines, Annie wanted to take some of the Gravenstein apples to the house and make a couple of pies, but of course I couldn’t let her. I had to tell her that too much green apple pie always gave me a stomach-ache, and that maybe we’d better wait until the Gravensteins were riper. Then I said that Grandfather wanted to take all the August Sweets he could while the season was still early, so we kept right on picking till it was time to go for the cows. We both went together, and we stopped by the granite outcropping to see if our squirrel was still around the big maple. We didn’t see him, and Annie didn’t notice the verse I had scratched in the stone. Once I thought I’d show it to her, but I didn’t. It seemed a little too much like bragging.

It was nearly twilight before we stopped watching for the squirrel, and Grandfather was outside the tie-up door of the barn when I drove our cows over the top of the orchard hill. When I first saw him he was waving his arms, and shouting, “Come quick, Ralphie! Come quick!”

The only thing that I could think of was that the bull had broken loose. I jumped the orchard wall, and raced toward the barn as fast as I could run. Grandfather kept shouting till I was halfway down the hill, then went to the big barn door, pushed it open a foot or so, and went in. I was so out of breath and my legs were so tired that I couldn’t jump the bars at the end of the barnyard. I crawled through them, and ran up the slope to the big door. As I pushed through the opening Grandfather had left, I saw him going out of the front doorway. “Come quick, Ralphie! Come quick!” he called. “See what I fetched you home!”

I slowed down, and my knees were rattling together as I walked the length of the barn floor. “There you be! There you be, Ralphie!” Grandfather sang out when I reached the dooryard. “Ain’t that a beauty!”

Old Nell was standing, hitched to the spring wagon, just beyond the barn doorway. Her head was hanging low, her shoulders and neck were dripping sweat, and her sides were heaving. At first, I didn’t notice the old manure spreader that was tied to the back of the wagon. Grandfather didn’t pay any attention to Nell, but grabbed my arm and led me back past her. “There! There! There you be, Ralphie!” he said as he stood back and looked at the spreader. “Ain’t scarcely nothing wrong with it—’cepting a couple of busted slats—and I made a powerful good trade on it. All-fired nigh enough scrap iron in it to fetch what I had to give for it. Cal’late it’ll save us a powerful lot of hard work. Going to have a tarnal lot of dressing to spread with a big barn full of cows.”

The spreader must have been one of the first ones ever made, and it was easy to see that it hadn’t been used for years. The iron was rusted brown and scaly, the wood was weatherbeaten, and there were only a few patches of faded red paint, but I couldn’t have been happier if it had been brand new. I stepped closer, rubbed my hand along the top rail, and said, “It sure is a beauty, and I think I can fix it all right, but I wish Uncle Levi was here.”

“Cal’late he will be! Cal’late he will be, Ralphie!” Grandfather told me. “Stopped off to the depot at the Falls and writ him a telegraph. Most generally, I don’t waste money on a telegraph less’n I be in bad trouble, and Levi knows it.”

28

A Holy Place

I
T WASN’T
until after I’d finished milking that I told Grandfather what Annie had said about the mill payrolls. He was slicing pork for supper, but he dropped the knife, and said, “Tell me that again! Tell me that again, Ralphie!”

I was starting to strain the milk when I told him the second time, but he stopped me. “Let be! Let be!” he snapped. “Why in time and tarnation didn’t you tell me first off when I come home? Leave that tarnal milk be, and get the harness back on Old Nell. Time flies!”

“Won’t the mill offices be closed this late at night?” I asked.

“Didn’t say they wouldn’t, did I? Don’t cal’late on frittering away half the morning a-getting the wagon loaded. The butter wrapped and ready? How many apples did you pick?”

“Nine bushels,” I told him, “and there were fifty-four pounds of butter. It’s . . . ”

“Good on your head, Ralphie! Good on your head!” Grandfather sang out as he reached for his hat. “How in thunderation did ever you do so much? Gorry sakes! Ought to fetch nigh onto a twenty dollar bill! By fire, Ralphie, I and you is going into the butter business. Gorry! Won’t Millie’s eyes pop out whenst she sees the way we’re a-going? Get your hoss! Get your hoss! Cal’late on having the wagon all loaded and ready afore we set down to our victuals.”

All the way up through the orchard, while we were loading the apples, and on the way back to the barn, Grandfather kept talking about Millie and butter.

After I’d put Old Nell in her stall, I expected that we’d go to the house, but he didn’t seem to want to. For a minute or two, he stood by the spring wagon, holding the lantern up to the baskets of apples, and looking at them. Then he set the lantern down, took an apple in his hand and, as he rubbed it slowly, said, “Don’t cal’late you knowed it, Ralphie, but Millie’s been on my mind a heap of late. Being as she ain’t wed a’ready, don’t cal’late ever she will. Was I to live as long as what Father lived, she’d have a home here for a long spell to come. But the workings of the Almighty is mysterious. Ain’t no prophesying what the years will fetch. Might come about she’d need a dollar put by for a rainy day. I been cal’lating that, after the provender money was took out, I and you would share and share alike on the butter business, Ralphie, but . . . ”

As soon as Grandfather hesitated, I said, “I think Millie ought to have a share. Taking care of the milk and making the butter is about as much work as taking care of the cows and milking.”

Grandfather didn’t look up, but kept on rubbing the apple, and said, “S’posing we’d say there was ten parts to it; five for the provender, two for me, two for you, and one for Millie. How’d that strike you, Ralphie? ’Course I’d still pay Millie her two dollars a week wages, and I’d cal’late on you a-sharing in the crops that come from the dressing.”

“That would strike me fine,” I told him. “And I think you’d better have some supper and get to bed, if you’re going to make an early start in the morning.”

“Gorry sakes! Gorry sakes! Victuals like to slipped my mind,” Grandfather said quickly, and started to the house. “By fire, ain’t it going to be nice a-having Millie home again and no victuals to fret about?” He walked along with his head down and his hands behind him till we reached the summer-kitchen doorway. Then he lifted his head quickly, and said, “Don’t cal’late I’m hungry. Cal’late I’ll go off to bed, so’s to make a powerful early start, come morning.”

It took me till nearly midnight to take care of the milk, fix myself some supper, and wrap the butter. In the morning, Grandfather had to come to my room and shake me before I woke up. It was still dark, and the chimney of the lamp he carried was so smoked that I could only see his outline against its dim light. “Victuals is on the fire, Ralphie,” Grandfather said, as he rocked my shoulder back and forth. “Daylight is fast a-coming, and I cal’late to be on the road afore sunup. Give Old Nell an extra quart of provender, and put the nose bag in the wagon.”

Grandfather was dishing up the oatmeal when I came down to the kitchen. He had his new suit on, and had trimmed his beard. There were steps in it, so that his chin looked as if it had been newly shingled. “Stir your stivvers! Stir your stivvers, Ralphie!” he said while I was lighting the lantern. “Victuals is on the table, and time flies. Did you say the butter was wrapped and ready?”

Grandfather could get along with less to eat than anyone I ever knew. He’d gone to bed without a bite of supper, and he only ate a few mouthfuls of oatmeal for breakfast. I wasn’t surprised that he wanted me to eat as fast as he did, but I was surprised at his snapping, “Let be! Let be!” when I started to go down cellar for the butter. “Get to your chores! Get to your chores afore half the morning’s wasted away!” he told me. Then he went into his room and shut the door.

Whenever Grandfather had made an early start before, he had always wanted me to get everything ready. And I’d always stood by the doorstone and, as he drove out to the road, called after him to have a good trip. I couldn’t imagine why he was so anxious for me to get at my chores that morning. It wasn’t day-light yet, and before, I’d always left the chores until after he was gone.

I was still wondering about it when I went back to the barn, harnessed Old Nell, hitched her to the wagon, and led her up to the doorstone. There wasn’t a sound from Grandfather’s room when I went to the sink for the swill pails, and Nell was still standing by the summer-kitchen door when I went into the tie-up to milk. I’d milked one cow and started on another when I heard the sound of hammering. I thought one of the butter-boxes had pulled apart, or that there might be something broken about the wagon, so I went to see if Grandfather needed any help. It was nearly daylight, but there was a yellow glow from the carriage-house doorway, and the hammering sound came from that direction. I went across the yard to the doorway and looked in. At the far end of the room beyond the forge, Grandfather was kneeling in the circle of light from a lantern. His back was toward me, and I started to go toward him, but stopped and tiptoed out when I saw what he was doing. He had the broken screen door laid out, and was nailing boards across the bottom of it.

After I’d gone back to the tie-up, I heard hammering again that seemed to come from the direction of the house. I didn’t go out, but listened closely. A few minutes after the hammering stopped, I heard Grandfather shout, “Gitap! Gitap, Nell!” and there was a rattle of wheels on the stones in the driveway. When I took the milk to the house, the screen door was back on the summer kitchen. It sagged crookedly from the hinges and, instead of the sapling, there was a turn-button to hold it closed.

There wasn’t much fun in hauling rocks off the high field, now that I’d heard Grandfather tell Mr. Swale he was going to plant it back to timothy hay. I didn’t loaf, and I kept at it all day, but I didn’t hurry as much as I had before.

It was late when Grandfather came home. I had the evening chores finished, had taken care of the milk, and was sitting on the doorstone with Old Bess when he drove into the dooryard. He didn’t really drive. He just sat, hunched down on the seat. Nell was walking slowly. Her head was down, the reins were hanging loosely, and Grandfather’s hands were folded in his lap. He looked as if he were asleep, and he hardly roused when I went to meet him. All I could think of to say was, “Well, I got quite a few stones hauled today.”

Grandfather’s head came up a little, but I don’t think he heard. He just looked down at me, and said in a tired voice, “She ain’t nowheres to be found, Ralphie.” Then he climbed down over the wheel and walked slowly toward the house. There was nothing I could think of to say. As I unhitched Nell from the wagon, I watched him go, as though he didn’t care whether or not he ever got there. When he reached the screen door, he opened it carefully, went in, and closed it gently behind him.

I watered Nell, put her in her stall, and fed her. Grandfather hadn’t lighted a lamp, and when I went into the house he was sitting at the kitchen table. His hat was still on, and his face was resting in his hands. He heard me, but he didn’t move. And his voice was hardly more than a whisper when he said, “Ralphie, she ain’t to be found nowheres. I been to every mill in both Lewiston and Auburn. She ain’t there, and she ain’t been there.”

Grandfather often put his hand on my shoulder, but I had never put mine on his. That night I couldn’t help it. I stood beside his chair and, though I didn’t more than half believe it, I said, “Don’t you worry, Millie will come back bye and bye. This is her home, and she loves it the same way you and I do.”

Grandfather didn’t move his head, but one hand came up and rested over mine. His voice was quavery, but there was warmth—almost joy—in it. “You do love it, don’t you, Ralphie? I seen it, Ralphie! I seen it soon’s ever you come home from Boston the last time. Your roots was a-reaching down into the soil you sprung from. I and you be a-going to fetch it back to fertile fields again.”

“Sure we are. Sure we are,” I told him, as his rough old hand patted up and down on mine.

The moon had risen, and as a cloud moved from its face, moonlight poured through the east kitchen windows in a soft, warm flood. The curtain was half drawn, so that I stood in the shadow, but the full richness of the light reached into the darkness of the room and spread around Grandfather. His head raised slowly, and he turned his face toward the window. For several minutes we were quiet. His hand stopped moving and lay still on mine. Then, in a voice that was almost as soft as the moonlight, he asked, “Ralphie, did Millie ever mention to you liking ary man?”

“No,” I said. “She certainly didn’t like the one that helped us that day in haying.”

“Curious, curious,” Grandfather said, after another minute or so, “she be nigh onto twenty-nine.” He didn’t move his hand from mine, but spread the other and drew it slowly down across his face—almost as though he were trying to wipe something away. “I ain’t been square with her,” he said, at last. “I been selfish, Ralphie. I been scairt someday there’d be one of ’em toll her away from home. I ain’t let no young ones stay hereabouts.”

“Oh, I don’t think Millie cares anything about men,” I said.

“’Tain’t in nature. ’Tain’t in nature, Ralphie,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t know yet; you ain’t old enough. There’s a day comes when a man hankers for a woman to hold in his arms . . . and a woman hankers to be held . . . ary woman . . . It’s in nature . . . The Almighty planned it so, Ralphie . . . and Millie’s come to be a full-blown woman.”

I don’t know how long I stood there with my hand on Grandfather’s shoulder. I forgot all about being there. Instead, I was remembering the day Annie had first sat with me on the stone outcropping. “I think I know,” I said.

“There’ll come a day you will,” Grandfather whispered, and still looked away toward the low rising moon.

After a while, I said, “You’re awfully tired, aren’t you? What would you like me to fix you for supper? I think I could make an omelet.”

“Ain’t hungry for victuals,” Grandfather said slowly. “Cal’late I better go to bed.” Still he didn’t make any move to go.

I slipped my hand out from under his, went to the pantry, and took a glass and the bottle from the cupboard. When I came back, Grandfather hadn’t moved from the table. By the moonlight, I measured out a spoonful of whiskey, stirred in sugar, and filled the glass with water from the teakettle. It was barely warm, little of the fragrance rose from the liquor, and I wasn’t sure Grandfather would take it. I set it down in front of him, and his hand reached out for it almost eagerly.

A cloud drifted across the face of the moon and, as if a door were closed, the kitchen became dark. Grandfather’s chair slid back, and I felt rather than heard him get up from the table. I was afraid he might stumble, and reached an arm out toward him as I stepped forward. As it touched him, he was turning toward the south window. The sofa was only a foot or two in front of him, and I caught his arm so he wouldn’t bump against it. “You needn’t to mind, Ralphie,” he said. “There ain’t a sofy or a rock or a tree on the old place I couldn’t find was I stone blind. Just let me set a minute and drink the medicine. I do be a little weary.”

On the high field, at the top of the orchard hill, a patch of moonlight lay golden in the blackness. We both must have seen it at the same moment. “Mark!” Grandfather said. “Glory be! The finger of the Almighty, Ralphie!”

Slowly, as the clouds moved, the bright spot on the hilltop widened and grew. Stonewalls traced their lines across it; deep shadows of the orchard trees dotted it here and there, and, as it spread, the whole picture was framed in the dark fringe of the pine woods. As slowly as the moonlight swelled, I realized Grandfather was whispering. The sound was hardly more than a light breeze makes in a field of ripened grain. I bent my head closer to him, and could just make out the familiar words: “Hallowed be Thy name.”

I felt almost as though I had broken into a holy place, and moved far enough away that the sound was only the breathing of air through his beard, but in my mind I followed the words of the prayer. When it was ended, Grandfather said aloud, “Here, Ralphie, here! Dump it in the swill pail. Don’t need no medicine tonight. Cal’late I’ll go to bed.”