Harvest Home

9

The Days of the Seasoning began, that lax period before harvest when the sun did its final drying of the corn, and the farmers readied themselves for the winter. And as the Days of the Seasoning went by, little by little I cleared my mind, and stopped thinking about the red pointing finger. At least I tried to tell myself I had. I convinced myself it had been nothing, a child having a joke on an outsider. During those early September weeks, I went about the village, sketching, doing water-color studies, and telling myself the incident had had no meaning. Sometimes I would see her-behind her gate, on the Common, along the road-but it was as if nothing had happened. So I told myself nothing had.

Though my perceptions might have sharpened since then, it is perhaps because I have learned the art of substituting one thing for another: it is the law of compensation put into sober practice. Later I was required by force of circumstance to negotiate a painful series of readjustments, but in that early autumn my only concern was the business of painting that small but particular corner of New England called Cornwall Coombe. It was all bright then, illuminated by the light I saw it with, and the brightness gladdened my painter’s eye. The light in cities is flatter, grayer, less defined. In the country it was quite different, an evocation of all the glowing light I had ever wanted to record, like some rare golden elixir that had been poured over the hills and fields. There were few grays in my palette, but an abundance of yellows and ochers and deep umbers with which I slopped and spattered the gessoed panels I painted on, working in a fury of haste to capture what I was seeing.

I felt I was becoming a fixture in the village, accepted not because I was the same as they, but because I was different, because I could “draw” things. I was respected because of my work, and because they sensed I wanted nothing more than to be able to put onto a board with brush and color the life I saw around me. And on my part I offered them ungrudging admiration. If I have presented them as picturesque and quaint, I have erred. Countryfolk they were, but a bunch of tough nuts. Dawn-to-dusk, fourteen-hour-a-day workers, unshirking and unstinting, stylish in their own New England right, whose plainest, homeliest task became a kind of ritualistic act: the quartering of an apple, the whittling of a stick, the laying of a brick. I appreciated them for their country wisdom, their humility, their hardiness. The sturdy sons of sturdy fathers. I found them people of simple but profound convictions, and I admired them for their love of the soil, their esteem for their village, their reverence for the past, and their determination to hold on to it at all costs. I liked their forthrightness, their modest know-how, their reticence; if they were worried and wearied by debt, or fearful of natural disaster, they alone knew it, for they never confided such things, except perhaps among themselves. It was the freemasonry of those who live close to the earth, with its harsh, often bitter realities.

And we were being offered a share in it. We were finding ourselves accepted as in the natural order of things, and were treated accordingly. Several Sundays after the Agnes Fair, we went to church. Mr. Deming and the elders were by tradition awarded the choice seats-up front, with cushions. Also included in this preferential treatment were, I discovered, the Hookes, Justin and Sophie. The remainder of the worshipers were ranged, also traditionally, in accordance with their social position and wealth, wives and husbands together-their offspring suffering time-honored banishment to the galleries, boys on one side, girls on the other-while the choir was seated in the loft behind, with Mrs. Buxley to conduct and Maggie Dodd at the organ.

When the last bell peal had died away, we all rose, and while the minister entered from the vestibule in his black gown, Amys drew the doors shut, their closing timed to coincide precisely with Mr. Buxley’s arrival in the pulpit. Soon thereafter the bell ringer stationed himself at the rear of the boys’ gallery, where he maintained a long wooden rod, ready to tap to consciousness any dozing young fry.

Our family sat toward the rear, in the straight-backed, unpadded, and decidedly uncomfortable pew one of the elders had assigned us, and we joined with the others while Mr. Buxley led the opening prayer. We sang the Doxology to Maggie’s accompaniment. After that came the pastor’s church notes and items of general interest; next was a hymn, followed by another prayer, and then, at the indicated moment, amid clearing of throats, rustling of programs, creaking of pews, and dropping of hymnals into racks, the congregation settled itself for the ritual Sunday sermon.

Harken, the village of Cornwall Coombe. Meek and humble lamb though he might be Monday through Saturday, the Reverend Mr. Buxley on the Sabbath was a lion. This was his church, this his pulpit, this his flock. For his text he had selected Second Kings, Chapter 18, Verse 32: “Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey, that ye may live and not die…” Having read from the scripture, Mr. Buxley closed the Book, removed his glasses, placed his hands on either side of the pulpit as though for moral support, and launched into a lengthy peroration. His broad ministerial gestures described the bounty of the promised harvest and the warranted thankfulness for a full grain elevator, fuller pocketbooks, still fuller stomachs. But then, alas-arms falling in despair-with such bounty, what else was there in this land of plenty?

Sin.

Here it comes, I thought, hellfire and brimstone; shades of Henry Ward Beecher.

“… sinning in this land of corn and wine,” deplored Mr. Buxley, and though he spoke of Israel, who was there gathered before him who knew not he alluded to Cornwall Coombe? Sin lay in the hearts of those who, like Jezebel, were greedy beyond their just portion. But-finger directed heavenward-the great Lord Jehovah, nothing loath, had prophesied that Jezebel, unfortunate creature, should have her worldly flesh eaten of by dogs at the wall of Jezreel.

I reached for Beth’s hand, lying on the hymnal in her lap. She smiled at me under her lashes and I gave her a silent I love you. On this glorious Sunday in Cornwall Coombe, where was there to be found a luckier man than I? She nudged me, directing my attention to the boys’ gallery where Amys Penrose, leaning over the back pew, administered a smart rap on a head with the tip of his rod. Blinking, Worthy Pettinger sat up abruptly, awakening in time to learn of Jezebel getting her just deserts: having painted her face and done up her hair, the hussy was leaning out a window, whereupon three eunuchs were induced to throw her down. “‘Go see now this cursed woman,’” the minister quoted, “‘and bury her: for she is a king’s daughter…’”

My eyes lingered on Worthy’s saturnine features as he lent appropriate attention to Mr. Buxley. In the several weeks since the Agnes Fair, the boy had been in our employ, helping complete the terrace wall, setting in the skylight, plus seeing to the myriad other chores Beth found in unending succession. Day by day, we were becoming more dependent on his help and, in consequence, day by day fonder of him. He had proved to be bright, able, quick to learn, and willing to please. Still, observing him as he worked, I could see he was somehow troubled, but when I tried to draw him out, I discovered nothing to solve the mystery of the boy’s melancholy. In the back of my mind always was the memory of the fair:

The red hands of Missy Penrose printed on his cheeks; from sheep’s entrails, like an ancient seeress the half-wit child had chosen the boy. Her pale face staring in triumph at Worthy’s paler one: plainly he had not wished it. Children and sheep’s blood and oracular vision: the startling ways of Cornwall Coombe.

Still, though I had said nothing, I felt glad that no one had witnessed the scene behind the barn at Penance House, the black guts of the sheep, the red pointing finger.

I turned my head, looking up at the gallery where the village girls sat. Missy Penrose’s expression darkened as she saw my apprehensive glance, and her brow lifted in slight acknowledgment, as though between us we shared some un-Spoken and forbidden secret.

What bond could possibly connect us-me, Ned Constantine, and her, the village idiot? Why had I been singled out for her notice? And, having attracted it, why had I experienced that strange mixture of awe and dread? Why, in dreams, did I now see that accusing finger?

Was there some unplumbed depth in her make-up? Not a chance, I told myself. Missy Penrose wasn’t deep-she didn’t have the brains God gave a chicken. She made up crazy things from her own addled sense of specialness, and the superstitious villagers, eager to believe her, treated her accordingly.

On the far side of the church, in the pews for the unmarried women, I accidentally caught the postmistress’s eye. Tamar Penrose’s lazy stare caused me to look immediately away. Had she winked? In church? With Beth beside me? I glanced back: prim and proper, the postmistress was dutifully attending her pastor.

When at length the sermon was concluded, the minister cleared his throat and announced the closing hymn. We sang again, the benediction was offered, the service ended.

As I walked into the vestibule, Amys Penrose was again lolling the bell rope, announcing that church was over. “Nice music,” I complimented Maggie Dodd as she descended the stairs from the loft.

“Why, thank you,” sang Mrs. Buxley, following her. “Success, James,” she called to her husband, greeting his parishioners at the door. “Our truants have entered the fold at last. Lovely day, isn’t it? Where are Mrs. Constantine and your little one?” Like a large, damp mollusk, Mrs. Buxley attached herself to my side and we passed through the vestibule doors to stand on the top step. “Ring loud,” she called gaily to the bell ringer. “Good morning, Robert. Didn’t Maggie play beautifully? That Bach! Worthy, dear, did you get all the hymnals put away? Close the cupboard door? That’s a good boy.”

I stopped to remind Worthy about a patch of broken slates that needed replacement on the studio roof. He said he would investigate, then ducked through the crowd gathered at the foot of the steps for after-church greetings. While Robert took one of Maggie’s elbows, I offered him mine on the other side to guide him to the sidewalk.

“Fallish day, Robert.” Wearing her best Sunday black, with carved bone brooch at her breast, the Widow turned away from Beth and Kate, with whom she had been speaking, to acknowledge the Dodds and myself. “‘Pears autumn’s goin’ to take us by stealth ‘stead of by storm this year. Mornin’, Asia. Where’s Fred today?”

Mrs. Minerva stopped to pay her respects. “Fred’s feelin’ sort of achy-and just before Harvest Home, too. Hate to think of what it’ll be with a change of weather.”

“Fred’s had the worst luck. You just come along to me, Asia, and let me give you something for him.”

“Some sermon today,” Mrs. Zalmon said, greeting the Reverend, who was once again meek, as though this very day he might inherit the earth. Divested of his robes but maintaining his circular white collar, Mr. Buxley accepted congratulations on his preaching while his wife basked in reflected glory.

“You can’t tell me he didn’t mean Gracie Everdeen,” someone said.

“Oh, dear, now, really, we mustn’t-I mean, it’s such a lovely day, we oughtn’t-now, Sally Pounder-” It was Mrs. Buxley’s habit not only to mince words but to make hash of them as well. “We mustn’t sully a Sunday with such talk-I’m sure James didn’t mean-did you, James?” Tucking her husband’s arm under hers, she took him off as though he were a parcel.

While the Widow continued talking quilts with Beth, Jack Mump’s cart was heard approaching, the clatter of his pans and kettles fracturing the churchtide quiet.

“Whatcha say, ladies, bounteeful day, ain’t it? Whatcha say, Widow?”

“Come ‘round later, Jack,” she said, and he tipped his hat to her. Pedaling up to Sally Pounder and Betsey Cox, the bank teller, he yanked open a drawer and nourished a piece of beadwork.

“Yessir, we got us a bounteeful day, girls, so let’s make hay while the sun shines. How’s your pig, Irene?” He tipped his hat to Mrs. Tatum. “Girls, lookee here what I got. One of a kind, a pure original, you’ll never see another one like it.”

“Don’t you know this is the Sabbath, Jack Stump?” Irene Tatum bawled. “Since when do we allow Sunday buyin’ or sellin’? You got some dispensation? No? Then haul your contraption off and don’t go merchandisin’ at the very church door when people’s just finished speakin’ with the Lord.” Her danger was as righteous as if she were Christ driving the money-changers from the temple.

I nodded to the Hookes, who now descended the steps; Justin was immediately surrounded by a ring of admirers, while Sophie stood aside with resigned good humor. I moved back as Tamar Penrose, fishing a key from her bag, passed close by. She gave me a sullen glance, then, turning quickly, she crossed the roadway onto the Common.

Mrs. Green was speaking to Mrs. Zalmon. “Look at them tatty beads,” she said as the peddler palmed the necklace off on Betsey Cox. “A body can’t set much store by what he trades in.”

“Ayuh,” Mrs. Zalmon agreed, making her words significant. “He’s not a likely person, is he?”

Mrs. Green’s mouth drew down. “Not likely at all.”

The Widow laughed. “Oh, I like Jack Stump. He’s independent. Folks have to be independent-gives ‘em character. I like a fellow who thinks for himself. People are so busy today tryin’ to be just like all the others. I like people who has peculiarities.”

Justin offered to drive her home in his El Camino, and she asked him to wait while she went into the churchyard and spent some time with Clem. As was evidently her habit, she had been inviting certain of the gathering to come to her house and be sociable before Sunday dinner. Justin accepted the invitation, then disengaged himself from the ladies and took Sophie off down the sidewalk.

“You come along for those scraps in a while,” the Widow told Beth, and, lifting her skirts, she went into the cemetery, shears dangling at her waist.

Maggie said, “Ned, take Robert down to the Rocking Horse for a drink; then we’ll go to the Widow’s.” While she and Beth turned to talk quilting with Mrs. Green and Mrs. Brucie, I gave Robert my arm and led him along the sidewalk toward the tavern.

“Another local custom?” I asked.

“One with the deepest significance. Ladies not welcome.”

Passing the churchyard, I saw the solitary figure beside Clem Fortune’s grave. It made a striking picture, I thought, the old woman in her widow’s weeds and white cap, standing among the ancient tombstones, head bowed, her lips moving.

It was indeed a grand day. The broad New England sky was sunny and bright, the air nimble with the slightest hint of autumn in the brisk breeze that tumbled leaves along the roadside. Groups of people were strung out along the sidewalks, enjoying the fine weather and discussing Mr. Buxley’s sermon. The belled sheep grazed on the Common, cropping the turf, their coats woolly and thick for winter shearing.

“What are those ridges in the grass?” I asked Robert. He angled his head as though to look.

“Bonfire circles. When the grass burns away and they re-seed it the next spring, it always seems to come up a different color.”

“Bonfires?”

“On Kindling Night, just before Harvest Home. A farm custom. Up in Maine and New Hampshire, they still have big fires on Election Day, which is somehow mixed up with the British Guy Fawkes Day, though I don’t suppose they remember quite how. Here they have a fire to mark the end of the growing year, and they dance around it.”

“What kind of dance?”

“What’s known as a chain dance. It goes back to the ancient Greeks-you can still see vases in museums with chain dancers painted on them, some of them dating back to the Bronze Age or further.”

I saw Missy making her way through the sheep, the incredible-looking doll in her hand. Her mother stood in the doorway of the post office, and I had the feeling that as we walked along, both pairs of eyes were fixed on us. At the tavern, the village males-Sunday suits, collars opened, ties yanked-moved aside to permit the blind man to reach a place at the end of the bar nearest the door. In the corner at our right sat Amys Penrose, drinkless, but looking hopeful. Amys, I had discovered, was regarded as the village eccentric Caretaker of Penance House across the way, he also looked after the sheep on the Common, swept the street, and was church sexton, bell ringer, and grave digger. A typical Yankee, he kept himself beholden to none, never kowtowed to the village elite, came and went as he pleased, and, being a Penrose, was maybe a little “tetched.”

As we sat down he hiked his stool over to accommodate us. “Mornin’, Professor.”

“That you, Amys? Your bells sounded fine this morning.”

“Ringin’s ringin’, and drinkin’s drinkin’.”

Though blind, Robert knew when he was being cadged. “Have a beer on me, Amys,” he offered. We ordered drinks from Bert, the bartender, and while they were being brought I heard one of the farmers in the vicinity speaking to a group around him.

“I guess Gracie’s ears were burnin’ today.”

“If the hellfires haven’t burned her first.”

Again I wondered what Grace Everdeen had done to merit such general censure.

Robert was speaking to Amys: “I was telling our friend here about the chain dances on Kindling Night.”

“Kindling Night.” Amys used the spittoon. “Crazy notion. They been doin’ them fool dances ever since I can recollect.” Like the Ancient Mariner, he seemed to compel me with his glittering eye. “You stop around here long enough, you’ll see lots of things.”

I sipped my drink, my head bent slightly so I could see off across the Common. Tamar Penrose was still in the post office doorway. “Why does the post office have such a large chimney?”

Amys took his face out of his beer mug. “Hell, that ain’t been the P.O. for no time a’tall. Used to be the old forge barn to the Gwydeon Penrose place, over there where I live.” He pushed his hat back, leaned his elbows on the bar, and ground some peanuts between his bony jaws. “Cagey feller, old Gwydeon. Once, during an Indian attack, he barricaded himself and his family inside that forge. Them Indians tried to burn him out, but he’d built the place of stone, so fire wouldn’t touch nothin’ but the door. When the Indians finally got in, all ready for scalpin’, they wa’n’t there. Foxy old Gwydeon’d dug a tunnel months before, and he got out and his whole family, too. ‘Course, the forge ain’t been a forge for years. After the Revolution, the barn was sold and it became a general store; then we got the P.O.”

“Tell me another thing, Amys,” I said. “Is it true what they say about Missy Penrose?”

The bell ringer’s brows darkened and his mouth curled sourly. “Depends on what they say, son.”

“I was talking about her freckles. Do they form a constellation?”

“There’s fools aplenty ‘round here who’ll believe anything you tell ‘em. If they care to think that whatnot child’s got the evil eye-why, then, I guess she’s got the evil eye. ‘Cept I’d put my money on the mother, not the daughter.”

“Easy, now, Amys,” Robert said soothingly.

Amys drew himself up and pounded on the bar. “Listen, if it comes to that, you tell me why the Reverend takes after a dear soul like Gracie, and never points a finger at the likes of her.” He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the post office.

“Never a gooder girl than Grace Everdeen, and for her sins she comes to grief, while that one, no better than she ought to be, is your fancy miss post office lady. And blast Roger Penrose, who couldn’t tell the gilt from the gingerbread.” His voice had risen to an angry quaver, and heads in the vicinity swiveled to stare at the old man. “Never mind, around here you can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

“Easy, now,” Robert repeated. To change the subject, I inquired if there were any boats on the river available for rowing. The old man confided that he kept one in a particular spot, and said I might borrow it anytime, a snug craft that needed no bailin’. He thanked Robert for the beer and left, and when we had paid the tab we stepped outside to find the peddler’s rig drawn up at the roadside, where Jack Stump was exhibiting for a gathering the identical one-of-a-kind piece of cheap beadwork he had purveyed to Betsey Cox in front of the church. “Sunday special, ladies,” he began, “a chunk of gen-u-wine Victorian, that’s whatcha got here. Victorian, ladies, which means it’s practically a antique, if you figure by years, because anything that’s Victorian means it goes back to before Columbus discovered America.”

The crowd laughed and someone called out, “Tell us, Jack Stump, what came before Victorian?”

“Before Victorian you had your Dark Ages, which was when them fearsome Tartars come across the steppes of Russia and tried to rule the world. But they used the back steps so they wouldn’t get caught.” Jack wheezed at his joke.

“And what came before that, Jack?” Robert called good-naturedly.

“Hell, Professor, you orta know. You had your religious age, when Martin Luther spiked his thesis to his front door.”

“Who was Martin Luther?” a voice demanded.

“Why, Martin Luther was a Lutheran. That’s what it means, a Lutheran is someone named Luther.”

“My name’s Luther, and I ain’t no Lutheran,” said one of the Soakes boys, lolling in the tavern doorway, a can of beer in his hand.

Jack chose to ignore him. “And Martin Luther told folks the Pope was nothin’ but a greedy cuss and any Christian worth his salt ought to show them roguey priests the door. Said Cath’lickism was nothing but organized crime, and folk shouldn’t have no more to do with ‘em.”

“Ain’t no Cath’lics this side of the river,” called someone in the crowd.

“I heard that, Grandmaw,” Luther said. “Ain’t no call to talk that way.”

“Ain’t no call for some folks to be off their own side of the river,” replied another.

Roy Soakes, the defeated wrestler, stepped out. “We come and go as we please. We don’t want no trouble.”

Jack Stump tossed the beads aside and out flew another drawer. “Soap, soap, ladies? Pretty little balls, shaped just like a pineapple, mighty pretty for the bathroom-no? Whatcha say, Sophie? Justin? How’s married life treatin’ you? Honey, if you’re lookin’ for a new dress for the huskin’ bee, I got some mighty lofty goods.” He snatched a bolt of fabric from a shelf. “You’d have to go some to find a dress pretty as this here’d make.” He unrolled the bolt partway and offered it to Sophie, draping the end of it over her shoulder. “And here’s needle and thread, pins galore, if you’ve a mind to do your own sewin’.”

“Use ‘em yourself, old man,” Roy said. “Use ‘em to zip your lip.”

Jack put on a knowing expression as he returned the stare. “Well,” he retorted slyly, “maybe I orta zip, ‘cause if I didn’t I bet I could tell of some might’ funny doin’s in them woods.”

“Peddler, mind your business,” Old Man Soakes said, shoving Luther out of the way and taking up a hulking stance in the doorframe. His voice had a hollow boom that silenced general comment as he pointed his finger at Jack. “Them woods is private property. That land is been Soakes land since before the first Continental Congress and it’s Soakes land to this day. We don’t like trespassers.”

“Ain’t your land,” someone said. “It’s ours. We’re corn, you’re tobacco.”

“‘Tain’t called Soakes’s Lonesome for nothin’,” the old man maintained stolidly. He turned to Jack again. “You’ve had your warnin’.”

“You don’t scare me,” the peddler retorted.

Roy’s look was murderous as he shook up his beer can and tossed it at the cart, sending wet foam in all directions. Jack danced around in a circle, holding out the bolt of cloth. “Lookee-you splattered all over! What d’you want to do a thing like that for? Maybe you fellows need for me to call the police?”

“You do that, peddler,” Old Man Soakes said darkly.

Roy laughed. “Don’t recall they got police over here. Cornwall Coombe must be gettin’ all the latest conveniences.”

Luther sauntered behind the peddler and bent down on all fours, and Roy gave Jack a shove that sent him tumbling in the dust. He scrambled away with a crab-like movement, then shouted as Roy skidded under the rig and lifted his back against the undercarriage to tip it over.

In a flash, Justin Hooke was on him, arms around his waist and yanking him from beneath the cart. Roy rose, then swung, knocking the farmer on the side of his head as three of his brothers lunged out the tavern door and joined in the attack. Jack Stump took several brutal blows in succession, which dropped him to the roadway. When he cried out, I sprang forward, grabbed Luther, and sent him reeling. Roy came at me and I threw two quick jabs, following them up with a heavy blow to the gut. Justin, meantime, had recovered himself and now ran to put his back against mine, waiting for the others to rise.

Even at double the odds, it was no contest. No sooner would one get up and step in for a swing than he would be knocked down again.

I grinned over my shoulder. “I didn’t know country boys knew how to use their fists.” Justin swung again; Luther took his third tumble. “This country boy does!” Justin was enjoying the fight.

Not so Jack Stump, who had taken a merciless beating. He lay in the dust struggling to get up, and as Old Man Soakes raised a foot to roll him over, a figure like a dark avenging angel confronted him.

“Give over, Mr. Soakes!” commanded the Widow Fortune, standing before him, her face hot and angry. Almost as tall as he, and as broad, she stared him down while the sons dropped their fists, waiting for the father’s signal.

“Whether they be your woods or not, we do not require the peace of our Sunday to be disturbed.” Her voice rang out loudly in the silence.

“I come to buy corn,” said Old Man Soakes, who had removed his hat and was inching the brim through his fingers.

“Then buy your corn and go home. Fight on your own doorstep, and leave peaceable folk to theirs.” She waited until the group had moved back to the tavern entrance and the crowd closed in; then she bent to look at Jack Stump, who lay at her feet.

“Well, Jack, are you mortally wounded?” She turned to me. “Help him up and give him a dusting; then bring him along to my house and we’ll see what we can do to repair him.”

10

“Brawlin’ in the streets,” the old lady exclaimed, sitting Jack Stump down in one of her kitchen chairs and bending over his battered face. Pale and shaken, the peddler felt his jaw and winced as he tried to move it. It appeared badly dislocated, and though he offered no complaint I could see it was causing him intense pain. Beth, Kate, and I stood watching as he entrusted himself to the Widow’s capable care.

“Here, now, Jack,” she said in a kindly tone, “lay your head against the back of the chair-that’s good, just so.” She peered down at him through her spectacles; then, standing behind him, she laid a hand on either side of the jaw, her sensitive fingertips probing their way along the mandible bone until they had located the desired spot. Her back muscles tightened, she gave a quick yank, and there was an audible sound as the jaw snapped back into place and Jack’s face went white under the stubble of beard.

“Lord, Jack,” she told him, “can’t a man shave for Sunday? There, now, how’s that suit you?”

He felt his jaw again, wiggling it back and forth, then nodding.

“And now you’ll be tellin’ me they started the fight, them Soakeses.”

Jack nodded vigorously while I related the details, including the episode of the flying beer can which had precipitated the attack. The Widow darted me a look.

“You’re as bad as him-and Justin, too. The three of you. What’ll Mr. Deming say?” She clucked behind her teeth and asked Beth to hand her the black valise from the counter; she set it on the table and opened it. Taking a piece of cotton, she selected one of the labeled bottles, poured some of the liquid on the cotton, and cleaned Jack’s swollen eye.

“You’ll be a fine sight tomorrow, you will. And a fat lip to boot.” She touched the swollen tissue lightly. “Now, then, I won’t hurt you. You’ve had enough hurtin’ for one day. That eye’s goin’ to need a poultice. Kate, put the kettle on.”

Kate filled the copper kettle and set it on the burner, while the Widow employed some fragrant-smelling ointment, carefully dabbing it on the injured lip. Then she slid a small tin of it into Jack’s pocket, with instructions for use.

She took a mixing bowl from the cupboard, and a cloth bag from a shelf, measured out a handful of what looked to me like plain corn meal, and added to the contents a pinch from one jar of herbs and a pinch from another, until the kitchen became one delicious amalgam of aromas. When the kettle began singing, she poured some boiling water into the bowl and mixed up a mash which she put into a piece of cheesecloth and rolled into a poultice. Letting it cool slightly, she gently tilted Jack’s head back again, and laid the poultice on the half-closed eye, tying it there with a strip from a rag.

“Jack, you look piratical. Right debonair, y’are.” She gave him a pat and dispatched him to bring in the used clothes he had for her, then showed us into the parlor while she dug out scraps for Beth’s quilt.

If the homely character of her kitchen told much about the Widow, her parlor told more. A room I suspected to be a repository for all her “best” pieces, it was cozy and comfortable-looking, and well used. Without ever looking shabby, the furniture showed long wear, and the rugs, hand-hooked or braided, were thin in spots, testament both to the feet that had trod them and to the years of treading. I asked if she had made them.

“Beth, you’ll most likely find that rocker comfortable. Kate, try the sofa. Yes, I done ‘em, every last one. Keeps me busy through the winters when I’m not makin’ scarecrows.”

I went to the bay window, which was filled with potted plants, and looked at the neatly carpentered bench that bore beautifully carved Roman numerals from one to twelve.

“Clemmon built that bench. My clock bench, he called it.” The bench was a sundial, and where the sun streamed through the window, hitting the frame, it cast a shadow. “I been tellin’ time from that bench the better part of my life.”

“How do you set it ahead for daylight-saving time, Widow?” asked the peddler, coming in with an armload of clothes.

“You’re a fool, Jack Stump. I been here long before daylight savin’s and I guess I can set my head for any such government notion.” As Jack began laying out his hoard on the piano bench, I glanced at the mantel, where an old-fashioned shaving mug sat, and beside it an ivory-handled razor. Mementos of the dead Clem Fortune, I decided. His widow, meanwhile, was examining each of Jack’s secondhand garments carefully, and with a smile in her eyes, but in a gruff voice, she demanded, “You don’t think I’m goin’ to buy any of these old rags, now, do you?”

The peddler held up a tattered coat. “Feel that material, the finest worsted. And the lining’s good as new.”

“New? Horsefeathers!”

“Practically. Needs a bit of sewing, mebbe, but you’re just the one to do it.”

“I wouldn’t ante up a quarter for that rag, Jack Stump. What else have you?”

He displayed another jacket, then some pants, then one or two dresses. “Here, now, what’s this?” she asked, ignoring them and snatching up another garment, her eyes flashing as she inspected it at arm’s length.

“I knew you’d hanker for that one, Widow.” Jack hopped to her side and held out the sleeves to better effect. It was an army tunic, green with age, the epaulettes on the shoulders tarnished to gray, the threads unraveled. “Got this from a woman over to Ledyardtown. Belonged to her great-uncle. Spanish-American War uniform.”

“Sort o’ dashing, en’t it?” She turned it backward and sniffed the material. “Smells o’ mothballs. And the Lord knows what else.” She darted a wary look at him. “How much?”

“Well, I figure I ought to ask ten dollars-”

“Jack Stump, you’re out of your mind if you think you can come into an old lady’s parlor and sell her a motley coat for ten dollars.”

Beth and I exchanged glances, smiling as the pair began haggling over the price, and we benefited by a lesson in good old New England trading. Well, the peddler said, she really had him; he was off on one of his territory circuits which would take him all through the northern part of the state and even over into New York; he couldn’t go dragging them clothes along with him-would she give him eight for the coat? The Widow held out for five dollars for the coat, plus some dresses he had laid out, and two pairs of pants, though what she might do with those she was sure she didn’t know.

The bargain was struck, and, scorning the remainder, she paid for her purchases and took them into the next room, where she dumped them in a corner. Through the doorway, I could see her hanging the tunic on a dress dummy and regarding it speculatively. “All of you, come and see,” she said. “This’ll make a fine scarecrow.

“Pay no attention to the higgledy-piggledy mess,” she told us as we came in. “Here’s where I make my scarecrows, and this is what I make ‘em from,” indicating a chaotic array of odd garments. “And that’s what I make ‘em on, my old Fairy Belle.” She pointed to an ancient sewing machine, the kind with a foot treadle. “The only new thing I ever hoped for was a fancy sewing machine with an automatic bobbin, but I expect I’ll sleep beside Clem before I ever stitch on one of them.” She sighed over the Fairy Belle, then looked around her. “All hodgepodge. It’s the same thing, year in and year out. Seems like I just get to know my scarecrows through the summer and I have to say goodbye to them.”

“Goodbye?” Beth asked.

“Scarecrows don’t last but the growin’ year. Come Kindlin’ Night they’ll all be burned. That’s a treat you folks have in store.” When the crops were harvested, she explained, the scarecrows were collected from the fields and brought to the Common to be put on the bonfire; then the ashes were sprinkled in the fields as a token to the following year’s crop.

She dug around in a large box until, with an exclamation of delight, she produced a cracked and battered cocked hat which she sat on top of the dummy where the Spanish-American tunic hung. She dragged out a pair of tall leather boots, and then a belt which she buckled around the middle of the coat. “Reg’lar warrior, en’t he, Kate? Needs a sword, I expect. This here’ll be someone’s next-year’s scarecrow, and won’t that be a sight for the crows?”

She yanked another box from a corner and spread the cardboard flaps. “Why, here’s what I wanted, right where I forgot I’d put it. Beth, come and look at all these scraps, what you’ll want to begin your quilt.” While she tugged out remnants of fabrics and examined them, I helped Jack gather up the pieces of clothing the Widow had not taken, and we carried them out to his cart, where he put them away.

“Now, there’s a woman,” he repeated, shaking his head and wheezing. “Ain’t she a woman, though?” He peered at me with his good eye, looking, as the Widow had said, somewhat piratical.

“How’s your jaw?” I asked.

“Good as new.” He waggled it again and grinned; then his brow creased as he frowned. “Skunks, that’s what they are, them Soakeses. A pack of drunken skunks. See what they drew.’ He dug in his pocket and produced a message scrawled on a scrap of soiled paper. “What’s that writin’ say?” I took it from him and read aloud:

“I ain’t afraid of no Soakeses, and they ain’t goin’ to keep me out of no woods, neither,” Jack said.

When I asked again what had happened there on the morning of the Agnes Fair, he launched into a heated jeremiad about the cost of his traps, the difficulty of setting them, and how it had become a job of warfare finding places to put the traps where the Soakeses were not likely to discover them. Between his rapid style of talking and the wheeze punctuating nearly every sentence, I had difficulty following his drift at times, but the essential facts I gathered were these:

On the morning the Widow and I had seen him go into the woods, he had checked his traps and discovered two of them missing. In a third was the scrawled warning to keep out of Soakes’s Lonesome. In another, he found a rabbit, which he put in his bag; then he continued on, finding most of the traps removed from their places. In time he had wandered into a part of the woods where he had not been before. It was there he had discovered the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome. Folks might think it a ghost, for it howled like one, but he hastened to assure me it was not the ghost that had frightened him.

“No ghost is goin’ to get the best of Jack Stump, no sirree. I had my look and I seen my fill, and I left, and I’m walking along through those woods when them fellows pop out from behind a tree and snatch me. The old man grabs me around the throat, and another’s got this shotgun and it’s pointing right at my nose. Well, the boys find that hare in my pocket, and they stole it from me, and they pushed me around, and finally they let me go, but the old man grabs up that gun and sets off a blast. By that time, I’d gotten behind this ol’ tree and he don’t see so good, anyhow. That’s when I come bustin’ out of them woods, and him chasin’ right after me.”

And since then he’d gone back to the woods, a fact not unknown to the Soakeses-hence the Sunday altercation. Had he, I asked, come upon the “ghost” again?

“Sure I have,” he boasted. “I seen it, and plenty.” He pointed off, as if the woods were close at hand. “And. it’s a very dark and secret place-out of the way, as you might say.” He waved an axe, saying he had marked the trail from where he had seen the ghost by making blaze cuts on the trees along the way. They began on a tall pine on a rocky knoll.

Just then, the Widow’s face appeared at her kitchen window, and in a moment she brought Kate out into the dooryard.

“Sell me that axe, Jack,” she called. “I need one.” She led Kate into the hen house, and I could hear her through the doorway, explaining the facts and economics of poultry life. Jack handed me the axe, which I laid on the step. “And does the ghost still holler?”

“Sometimes it do, sometimes it don’t. Sometimes it wails like a banshee, sometimes it don’t make utterance.” Asia Minerva was coming up the drive, and Jack, still talking, tipped his hat to her; in a moment the Widow appeared from the henhouse and took her into the kitchen.

I fingered the sinister warning, trying not to smile. For all the peddler’s scruffiness and talky ways, I liked him-even if he couldn’t write his name.

“I’ll tell you what about them Soakeses,” he continued confidentially.

“What?”

“You know they’s supposed to be a still in them woods?”

“Yes.”

“And you know about the revenuer that come around?”

“Yes.”

“The ghost is the revenuer.”

“How do you figure?”

“I don’t figure-I know. I seen him. They done him in, them Soakeses. They killed him. That’s the ghost people talk about. But I touched it.” He held up his thumb.

“There’s a body?”

“Bones. The fellow’s bones.”

“How does he howl, then?”

Jack silenced his reply as Asia Minerva’s face appeared briefly at the kitchen window. Then, “You believe me, don’t you?” he asked, blinking, his watery eyes appraising me.

“Jack Stump, stop palaverin’ about bones out there with my guest.” The Widow’s face popped up at the window and she shook a wooden spoon. She disappeared immediately, and Jack’s hand tugged at my sleeve. “You believe me, sir, you believe me,” he maintained stoutly, as though a lie were never to pass his stubbled lips. “Lookee, I’m off around my territory for a few weeks, but before I go I’m gonna have to have another look.”

I returned the scrap of paper, which he made into a small roll, and slipped it into the red felt bag in his shirt. “The Widow’s magic’s good for toothache; mebbe it’s good for Soakes-ache.” He dropped the bag back inside his shirt, then set his feet on the bike pedals and careened the rig up the drive, narrowly missing the Hookes’s El Camino as it pulled in.

Kate came out of the hen house saying she’d like to raise chickens, and we went into the kitchen together, where the Widow was decanting some concoction into a bottle for Asia Minerva. She corked it, then snatched a piece of paper off a spindle and scribbled some directions. Asia appeared upset as she took the medicine.

“No bother, Asia,” the Widow told her. “Fred’ll be well in a jiffy. Come in and have some coffee.” She ushered us into the front parlor which had filled considerably, the Demings having arrived, and Constable Zalmon and his wife, as well as Robert and Maggie and Beth. The conversation broke off suddenly, and I knew they had been discussing the melee with the Soakes gang. I thought I detected a look of approval from the staid Mrs. Deming, and I wondered if perhaps the fight had done something to solidify my position in the community. Even Mr. Deming smiled, and as Justin Hooke came through the front door he hurried to shake my hand like an old friend.

“Here’s the Harvest Lord himself.” The Widow Fortune kissed his cheek, then turned to Sophie. “And his Maiden.” She offered him her own chair, while Sophie sat beside Beth, who was speaking with Robert, and I went and sat on the sofa arm. “You’re right,” Robert was saying, “you’d have to travel far and wide before you found a place like Cornwall Coombe.” He felt in his breast pocket for a cigar, which Beth took and lighted for him the way she had seen Maggie do.

“Thank you, m’dear. You see, part of the reason is geographical, as I said. We’re a small valley-an enclave, really- ringed on three sides by hills, and we sit in a larger valley. On the fourth side is the river. The old turnpike road ran close by for two centuries, but it was thirty miles east of us, and I don’t think anyone who traveled it knew Cornwall Coombe was here. Thirty years ago, the parkway was put through but still no one came near the village. Railroads, sure they built one-six miles due east on the Saxony side. The nearest airport is some sixty miles away, and there still isn’t more than the one road in and the one road out of Cornwall Coombe. That you, Ewan?” Robert turned his head as Mr. Deming joined our group. “I can smell that apple tobacco of yours. I was attempting to tell our new friends how we all came to get fitted into the Coombe. Perhaps you could explain better, having been here longer.”

Mr. Deming puffed his pipe thoughtfully and scratched his head. “Well, I dunno. Possibly I’m correct in assuming one of the things that attracted you to our little hamlet was its quaintness, is that so?”

“Of course,” Beth said. “That’s its charm. It’s so unspoiled.”

“Unspoiled, yes. And the reason is that the march of time, so to speak, has passed us by. People think we’re fighting a lost cause, but don’t tell that to Fred Minerva or Will Jones. They plant when the locust leaf is the size of a small child’s littlest finger, and not before. They clean out their corncribs when the moon is in the second quarter, no other. When Fred courted Asia, or Will was making sheep’s eyes at Edna, it wasn’t in the summer, nor did they marry in June, because that went against custom. They had to wait until winter, when the crops were in. All these things are governed by patterns that go back so far they’re obscure and indefinite even to them. But they do it not knowing why they do it. And outsiders are bound to think it strange. The social unit here is not the family, it’s the community. And the community is founded on corn. As the corn nourishes, so does the village.”

When Mr. Deming had finished, I went into the dining room and put down my coffee cup. Leaning against the door-jamb, I fished out my sketchbook and began a surreptitious drawing of Sophie. Clearly, she had been and still was the village beauty. Her hair was long, dark blond underneath and, where the sun had touched it, soft and yellow like corn silk. Her eyes were the bright blue of a china plate, expressing a bewitching innocence, and her voice had a lilt to it that I found captivating. She seemed easy and relaxed, with an air of calm assurance about her. There was a kind of strength in her face, and the quiet simplicity of the New England goodwife of old. She had no fuss about her, no feathers, and her eyes revealed an honesty and determined cheerfulness that, as I sketched them, only occasionally seemed to betray a slight yearning. I was sure she was a good wife to Justin, a capable homemaker, and probably one day would be a good mother.

Close by, Mrs. Deming, Mrs. Zalmon, and Mrs. Minerva listened from their circle of chairs as the Widow reminisced about her dead husband.

“You still miss him, don’t you, Widow,” Mrs. Zalmon said.

“Ayuh. It don’t do to look backward, I know, but all the same I don’t suppose a day goes by but what I don’t think about him. He was a good man.”

Aye, Clemmon Fortune was a man worth hoeing corn for, they agreed, listening while the Widow talked about that long-ago time when she had been young and was Clem’s wife.

“Oh, he had a singing voice,” she said. “He could sing the day through, dear Clem could.” She remembered how they used to hitch up the buggy and take the Lost Whistle Bridge ‘cross river, and how he loved hearing the clop of the horse’s hoofs on the planks, and how the resounding chamber of the bridge itself made his voice sound even more powerful. He’d pull up right in the middle of the bridge and serenade her, singing “Lady Light o’ Love” or “Sweet Nonnie in the Willow Shade,” and put his arm around her waist, romancing in her ear. Well, she said, though Clem was gone now, the covered bridge remained.

“Seems a shame to lose so many of them bridges, somehow,” Mrs. Deming observed. “They give a touch to the countryside, don’t they?”

“They give a touch to Soakes’s Lonesome, anyways,” the Widow said.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Zalmon tellingly. “Did you go a-gatherin’ herbs this week, Widow?”

“‘Deed I did.” She flicked an eye about the room to see that her guests were enjoying themselves. “Summer gatherin’ for winter ills. Good bit o’ elecampane out in them woods. Except”-making an awful face-”them hog-footed Soakes boys trample a plant to pieces.”

“Why don’t them Soakeses keep to their own side of the river?” Mrs. Zalmon demanded.

“That Old Man Soakes is a tyrant if ever there was.” Mrs. Deming tugged Mr. Deming’s coat. “Ewan, the elders ought to do something about them Soakeses.” She turned back to the ladies. “The way he raises them wild sons. They got no more brains than one of Irene’s pigs, and stomachs to match.”

“Aye, they’re troublesome,” the Widow said thoughtfully.

“Why, how’s that, Widow?”

“To tell the time, read the clockface. You’d have laughed to see how Jack Stump come shootin’ out of them trees on fair day, as though the devil himself was on his heels.”

“Jack Stump was in Soakes’s Lonesome?”

“Ayuh.”

“Scared him, did they?”

“You never seen that cart go so fast as it did down the Old Sallow Road.” Peering through her spectacles, the Widow smiled up at me. “What happened was,” she pursued, “Jack went nosin’ about the woods, and the Soakeses caught him snoopin’ and scared him off.”

“He goes trappin’ in there, don’t he?” Mrs. Deming asked.

“Aye. Rabbits and such.”

“Well,” said the Constable’s wife significantly, “if I had an interest in them woods, I’d surely keep a close watch-if I was a Soakes or not.”

“Pooh, them Soakeses.” The Widow slipped me a wink, then changed the subject quickly to arrange an impromptu quilting party that would take place that night at Irene Tatum’s. While she spoke, I observed Justin Hooke. With his yellow crop of curls and blue eyes, he could have been Sophie’s brother, not her husband. Folding his ham-like hands across his front, he talked graciously with Mr. Deming, who had moved next to him, but under the farmer’s easy humor I detected greater depths, a sense of a man knowing what he was about, that he had been brought up to a purpose in life, one that he found satisfying in all its respects: a destiny achieved.

Mrs. Zalmon meanwhile had drawn Kate to her and was explaining the calendar of yearly festivals celebrated in the village. First came Planting Day, some of which Kate had briefly witnessed. Next was Spring Festival, then Midsummer’s Eve, the Agnes Fair, the Days of the Seasoning, and finally the four days of Harvest Home, including the Corn Play and Kindling Night.

“What’s the Corn Play?” Kate asked.

“Sakes, child, it’s just a play. It comes at the huskin’ bee.”

Mrs. Zalmon looked over to Justin. “Yonder is the Harvest Lord, Mr. Justin Hooke, and the Corn Maiden, Mistress Sophie Hooke.”

“It’s very old, Kate, our Corn Play,” Justin said. “I guess there’s been the play before there was a Cornwall Coombe, even. It was brought from the old country, and it goes back to the olden times, isn’t that so, Widow?”

“What’s it about?”

Justin looked to the Widow, who said, “Why, the Play tells the story of the growin’ of the corn. You’ve never heard that story, have you, Kate? Sophie, run and bring the quilt from the chest at the foot of my bed.”

As Sophie went on the errand, Maggie passed me with a tray of empty coffee cups, and I followed her into the kitchen.

“Ned-hi!” she said gaily, brushing my cheek with her lips. “I haven’t had a chance to talk with you. You’re drawing- let’s see.”

I showed her the sketch of Sophie. “Oh, Ned, it’s lovely.” It was not, I felt, an offhand compliment. She carefully studied the head, which in a rough, sketchy way captured something of Sophie’s glowing character. Maggie rinsed the glasses and one by one set them on the drainboard. I pocketed my sketchbook and took a dishtowel.

“Ned, I don’t think I’ve said how nice it is to have you here. It’s nice for the village, of course, but I mean for us- Robert and myself.” She spoke with an easy warmth and I could not doubt her sincerity. “I hope you didn’t think I was unfriendly that first day. We’re not used to visitors here. But I told Robert that evening the best thing that could happen would be for you to buy that house. So you see, it’s really from selfish motives I’m saying this. We need you here, we really do.” She turned off the tap and dried her hands on the other end of the dishtowel.

“Hey, isn’t that bad luck?”

She laughed. “I’m not superstitious. There’re enough others around here for that.”

“Maggie, how did her husband die?” I inclined my head toward the other room.

“Clem Fortune? Oh, dear. It was a tragic thing. Of course, it happened long before we came back here-” She broke off, tidied her hair, stared out the window. “He killed himself, accidentally. With an axe. He’d gone out to Soakes’s Lonesome to cut a tree, and the axe slipped. Gashed him terribly in the thigh, and he must have gotten lost in there somehow-it’s easy to do-and before he found his way out again, he’d bled to death.”

A figure stood in the doorway. I turned, saw the Widow. She nodded, hands clasped over her black apron. “Aye. He was like a tree, Clemmon was, and like a tree he cut himself down. Ironwood tree. Never did find out what he wanted with ironwood. Come along, if you want to see the quilt.”

I glanced at Maggie, then laid down the dishtowel and followed the two women into the living room. A giant quilt was spread out on the sofa back, while the guests stood around admiring it. The Widow invited us to draw nearer, settled her spectacles on the bridge of her nose, and began describing the various personages and events that had been stitched in bright-colored pieces. “Now, Kate, here’s himself, the Harvest Lord. Here’s his crown, all made of cornhusks, and his red cloak.” She traced the outline of the figure, immense, stalwart, strong, wearing a diadem of husks and a long bright mantle, with a colorful, short-skirted costume beneath. There was power in the figure; enormous vitality seemed to radiate from it.

By his side was a female figure, surrounded by others in the act of lifting a veil from her face. Another stood by with her crown. This was the Corn Maiden and her court. It was the Corn Maiden who, mated to the Harvest Lord, caused the corn to grow.

Standing beside Justin, Sophie listened with both gravity and dignity. She caught me watching her, and her serious expression changed into a bright smile, as if to say, Isn’t it all silly? The Widow was pointing out other symbols: the rain which nourished the earth, the moon which told when the planting must be accomplished, the sun urging the stalks up through the soil.

She described the rest of the participants as well: the Harvest Fool, in his funny corn clothes, looking rather like a medieval jester, and the Young Lord-he who, by Missy Penrose’s choice, would be played by Worthy Pettinger.

Beth asked whose hands had stitched the quilt originally, and the Widow replied that it had been made by the wife of old Gwydeon Penrose, who had founded the original settlement. Not by herself, of course: almost all the village dames had worked on it. No need to mention that this was more than three hundred years ago, and that this quilt was a copy of another, even older, which had remained in old Cornwall. Of course, in that quilt there wasn’t any corn; corn hadn’t been known in England till after Columbus’s New World discovery. Before that it was just wheat and rye and such; but still they’d had a word, “korn,” signifying the various kinds of grain.

When we had admired the workmanship again, Sophie carefully folded the quilt and bore it off to its storage place. Beth sent me for the box of scraps and soon thereafter the Widow’s sociable began breaking up.

When we had made our goodbyes and thanked our hostess for her hospitality, we went along. Going down the walk, I saw a doll lying on the lawn; then, in the corn patch, a furtive movement between the rows. As we got in the car, the child Missy Penrose stepped out and snatched up the doll. Then, scraping a stick along the fence pickets, she made a noisy clatter as she went away up the street.

11

The studio had turned out fine. The skylight provided good illumination, there were shelves aplenty for my art books, storage space for my paints and brushes, racks for my canvases and larger drawing pads. Plaster casts hung on the white walls: a foot, a nose, a giant eye; above these a mask of Danton, guillotined, which I had bought in Paris years ago.

I painted for an hour, immersed in my work, until I heard Beth announcing the roast was done. I rinsed my brushes and shook them off at the sink, then washed my hands. Kate shouted up to the roof overhead, where Worthy was hammering, inviting him to eat with us. “Hey,” I called to him, “there’s a leak down here.” I kicked a bucket under the pipe to catch the persistent drips, and as I dried my hands I noticed how the wart on my finger was shrinking. I slipped out the little red felt bag the Widow had hung around my neck a week ago, wondering what secret Cornish charm she had put into it that caused warts to disappear.

I called to Worthy to come down from the roof and went into the kitchen with Kate.

“What’s the matter with Worthy, Daddy? He’s been so glum lately.”

“Don’t know, dear. Maybe he’s got problems.”

“Don’tcha think he’s good-looking?”

“Very.”

I fingered the back of Kate’s neck. “You getting a crush?”

“Come on, Daddy. Mommy, when can I have a date?”

“Ask your father, dear.”

“Daddy?”

“I think you’d better take that up with your mother, sweetheart.”

“I could go to the movies with a boy, couldn’t I?”

I thought the interest in the opposite sex a healthy sign, and decided Kate was beginning to come out of her shell. “When you get asked, I’m sure your mother’ll let you go to the movies.”

We sat down to dinner, Beth and I at the ends of the table, Kate between us on one side, Worthy on the other. Since coming to Cornwall, we had more or less adopted the habit of the village, which was to have the main Sunday meal in the afternoon. Standing over the large platter of roast beef, I sliced off the end cut that Beth preferred, laid it on a plate, and passed it along to Kate for vegetables. “Worthy, how do you like your meat? Rare?”

“I like it well done, too.”

The other end usually went to Kate; I looked at her and she said quickly, “Oh, that’s good, because we like ours rare- right, Daddy?”

I served Kate, then myself, and pulled up my chair. When we had begun, I quizzed Worthy as to the condition of the studio roof. He had ripped out the section of broken slates, but said that the understructure showed no signs of dry rot; all that was needed was to replace the slates. Where, I asked, did one buy them? He thought a minute, then remembered a woman over in Saxony whose breezeway had collapsed in a snowstorm last winter. The woman had not rebuilt, and he thought possibly she might still have the used slates, which would be better than buying new ones. Her name was Mrs. O’Byrne.

The talk got around to gardening, and I informed the table of my intention to plow up the meadow next spring and plant vegetables. Worthy instantly became excited, and said he would bring his tractor around. We got into a discussion of organic gardening, and he described the kind of operation some friends of his had over in the neighboring town of Danforth. Like ourselves, they, too, had come from the city, and had pooled all their money and resources to form a commune. They had bought a defunct place which they rechristened Nonesuch Farm, and though the townsfolk called them hippies and weren’t being helpful, they hoped in two years’ time to put it on a paying basis.

“I’m going over there this afternoon, if you’d like to see it.”

Another time, I suggested; I had plans for Beth and myself. But perhaps Kate might enjoy the ride. I signaled Beth, who had opened her mouth to protest; she quickly picked up the cue and consented.

“Back to school soon?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you looking forward to that?” Beth said.

“Yes, ma’am.” He was in his last year of high school, and, as he had told me, hoped, against his father’s wishes, to enter agricultural school next fall. He had been working hard to earn the money, and had been studying nights, “when Pa doesn’t catch me.” As the conversation continued, I watched him closely. His moodiness, habitual of late, seemed to have washed off at the kitchen sink, and he laughed and joked with Kate, who, seated across from him, kept plying him with various dishes. Perhaps the Widow was right, perhaps he just needed more feeding.

I asked him what the latest village news was. Not much, he replied; never any news in Cornwall Coombe. Mrs. Mayberry was ailing, wouldn’t last till Harvest Home; Mrs. Thomas was going to have a baby, probably before next Tithing Day; Elsie Penrose, the librarian’s daughter, was going to be courted by Corny Penrose, her second cousin on her father’s side. Corny had given Elsie a cob.

“Mrs. Thomas is going to have a baby? How wonderful!” Beth exclaimed. “Why is Elsie getting a cob from Corny Penrose?”

Worthy said it was an old village custom; when a boy was interested in a girl he sent her a corn ear, and if she accepted his attentions she husked the ear and returned it; if she wasn’t interested she sent it back unshucked. Sometimes a girl, if she was bold enough, would send an ear to a boy. But whatever ears might be sent, the results had to wait until the crops were in.

“Has anybody sent you a cob?” Kate asked.

“Not yet.”

She looked relieved and began relating what she had learned from the Widow’s quilt concerning the Corn Play. Worthy’s face darkened. “That’s silly stuff.”

By diligent questioning, Kate found out a little more about the choosing of the Harvest Lord and the Corn Maiden. Since the original Agnes Fair, the Harvest Lord had always been picked on that day. He would be crowned with honors the following year at Spring Festival, when the villagers would bring him presents. Then, during the next seven years, he would be given all sorts of privileges, including free communal labor to work his fields and farm. And at some point during that time, he would select a Corn Maiden to reign with him.

“Is it always a husband, who chooses his wife?” Beth asked.

No. The village had been surprised when Justin had married Sophie, then picked her for his Corn Maiden. Usually it was a single girl. When the Corn Play was given, in the Grange hall, the new Corn Maiden would be crowned.

Beth and Kate cleared the table and brought in dessert and coffee. When they were seated again, Kate asked, “Worthy, you’re going to be the new Harvest Lord in the play, aren’t you? Who’ll you pick for Corn Maiden?”

I exchanged a look with Beth: bold as brass, our daughter. Worthy frowned and didn’t answer; he wasn’t interested in all that.

“Do they have square-dancing at the husking bee?”

“Sure.”

“Can you square-dance?”

“Sure.” But he didn’t like doing it. Square-dancing was old-fashioned, for old fogeys who lived in the past. He didn’t want to live in the past; he wanted to live in the here and now. His brows were drawn down in a gloomy line as he toyed with his napkin. “Mr. Deming carrying on like that at the fair. All I was doing was having some fun, but you’re not supposed to bring a tractor on the Common. You’re not supposed to play on the shinny pole. Old geezers like him don’t think anything’s funny. The minute you do different or act different, people talk. It makes you stand out, and people around here don’t want to stand out.”

“Do you?”

“Well, I don’t want to be like everyone else. There’s no point in doing things just because other people do them, is there? I think it’s crazy doing them their way just because it’s their way. Look at Gracie Everdeen.”

“What about Gracie Everdeen?” I put down my fork and prepared to listen.

“I don’t know, really. It all happened when I was small. But there’s been lots of talk.”

“What kind of talk?”

“They say she went crazy.”

Gracie Everdeen, a product of the overly mixed bloodlines of the village? “Was she a Penrose?”

“I don’t know, sir. She may have been. Almost everybody is, one way or another. She was supposed to marry a Penrose.”

“She was?”

“They were engaged, then she ran off.”

“But she came back, didn’t she? She’s buried in the cemetery-or out of it, rather. Why is that?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Who was she engaged to?”

“Roger Penrose.”

Ah, Roger Penrose the bone-carver. “Did he marry someone else?”

“He died.”

“How?”

“He got killed jumping his horse. A broken neck, I think. Like I say, it all happened a long time ago. Before-”

“Yes?”

He shrugged. “Before I was old enough to remember.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Gee-it’s getting late-”

“Don’t you want dessert?” Beth said.

“Maybe we’d better get started,” he suggested quickly and I had an idea he was trying to extricate himself from a conversation he was sorry he’d begun in the first place.

When we had seen them off for Danforth, with instructions to be back before nine, Beth and I put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher, then walked down the lane and through the meadow to the river, where we found the boat Amys had mentioned. We had brought along a blanket and a transistor radio, and Beth tuned in some music, sitting in the stern, while I turned the boat and began rowing upriver.

It was one of those days a happy man records for his mental posterity. Sunday afternoon, New England, summer’s end. A dreaming landscape; faultless sky; dazzling clouds; bursting sunlight; river calm, placid, seductive in its peaceful turnings; the splash of water, creak of oarlocks. Birds singing along the shore; the play of light and shadow among the trees; a little music; your wife, whom you love. What might be called the ingredients for a perfect day.

I could tell Beth was in one of her reflective moods and I did not try to make conversation, but only gave myself up to the beauty of the afternoon. Along the shore, the oncoming autumn was showing itself, not outright, but secretly, in the smallest corners. There was a tang of smoke in the air, making a kind of uneven haze that seemed to lay a golden sheen over everything-water, trees, foliage-with the soft luminosity of a Turner painting. It was a special kind of ease and contentment that enveloped me as we followed the meandering course of the river for perhaps a mile, until we came within sight of Soakes’s Lonesome. When we had got around several more bends, I saw on the opposite bank the Soakeses’ jetty. Half a dozen ducks floated idly in the water, while on the landing the old man and the boys were hunched over some kind of activity. They looked up, eying us briefly as we passed. I got a feeling of menace from this furtive appraisal, and as I glanced back the old man opened his knife and stropped the blade on his boot. Putting more force into my strokes until we were well past them, I looked back again to see one of them getting into the skiff.

I could hear the dull reverberation of the motor as we rounded the next bend, and I wondered if we were to be followed or in some way interfered with, but when the skiff appeared again it was heading for the Cornwall shore. Shortly we had the river to ourselves once more. I wiped my arm across my forehead, rested on my oars, and let the boat drift close to the bank, enjoying our solitary state.

The sun felt warm on my back and shoulders, and I stripped off my shirt, which Beth took and held in her lap. She still continued rapt in some kind of reverie, and I made no effort to disturb it. Once she looked at me with a trace of a smile; then she looked down again, watching her hand in the water. She was wearing a gold snake I had bought for her in Venice, and I saw a fish dart close to it, attracted by the bright gleam of the metal. Then Amys Penrose’s flat-bottomed tub became a gondola and the river was the Grand Canal, the sky not American but Italian, and we were back in Venice, that summer seventeen years before, in 1955.

It had begun the previous winter, a bone-chilling one in Paris, where I was studying at the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill. I picked Beth up on the grand staircase of the Louvre, under the “Winged Victory.” She’d come over from London with a college chum she’d been sharing a flat with in Chelsea. I heard her reading from her catalogue: “The ‘Winged Victory of Smothrace.’” Smothrace, for God’s sake; the opportunity was too good to let pass; I stopped and pointed out her error. Yes, she knew it was Samothrace, but it always came out Smothrace with her. The three of us spent the afternoon together, and then, out of my mind and over my budget, I invited them to dinner.

The other girl, Mary Abbott, went back to London alone and Beth stayed with me in my loft in the Rue du Bac. Sous les toits de Paris, and all very romantic and my bed was a lot warmer than it had been in some time. We saw the spring in, and spent a fortune keeping the rooms filled with lilacs, which she loved, and in June I bought a secondhand car, packed up my paints, and we worked our way down to the South of France, then into Italy. We lingered for days in the Uffizi in Florence, then went on to Venice, and finally to Greece.

We spent that winter in North Africa, where a steady stream of letters arrived for Beth, addressed in a firm, authoritative hand. Reverend Colby, Beth’s father, was demanding that she return home. Hers was an unusual situation, and though she was not inclined to talk about it I gradually learned enough to put the puzzling pieces of her life into some sort of order.

She had been christened Bethany, after the town in Connecticut her mother had come from. Mrs. Colby had been rich, and her money enabled the Reverend to enjoy a style of living not permitted to most men of the cloth. Their house, in a suburb of a large New England city, was expensively furnished, but although Lawson Colby liked his creature comforts, he mentally donned a hair shirt, forcing his wife into a strict and regimented observance of Protestant virtues. Mrs. Colby had died of diphtheria when Beth was only two, and from then on Beth lived under the bitter and tyrannical eye of her father, who forced church at her on all occasions. What he raised was not a God-fearing child, but a God-despairing one.

After college, Beth had persuaded him to let her come to Europe with Mary Abbott, to “visit cathedrals,” but now the year was up and he demanded that she return home. I had decided I was going to marry her, and had notions of what sort of reception this would meet with at the Reverend’s Methodist hands. Bethany Colby marrying the son of an immigrant Greek from Jersey City-Catholic Greeks, at that. Raised in a happy home, I could appreciate Beth’s basic needs. Being motherless, she felt rootless. She was not religious, she did not love her father. She had never experienced any warm stream of affection as a child, and after her mother’s death the father had become a stricter parent-harsh, even-making sure that the minister’s daughter didn’t go wild. In the Puritan ethic of his Cotton Matherish forebears, to be happy was, by extension, to be sinful, and until we met I do not think Beth had ever been very happy. But there was this about her: she had the characteristics of the chameleon, which takes hue and color from its surroundings; stubborn though she might be at times, Beth was open to influence. I was a happy person, and by some subtle transference she, too, became happy. With me the minister’s daughter went wild on the Left Bank and all the Reverend’s decrees about Thrift, Work, Virtue, and the True God were tossed out the windows of our Paris loft.

It was impossible to toss the father as well, so we went home and faced the music, which at best proved discordant. The Reverend had heard tales of bohemian artists living in garrets; he did not deem me a suitable choice for a son-in-law. But by spring Beth’s defiance of the old man was sufficient to elicit his agreement to our marriage if I would “settle down to some honest work.”

We were married in June and moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village. I put the paintbrushes away, and found a job with Osborne & Associates. The brushes stayed put away for fifteen years.

Shortly after Kate was born, we took a larger apartment on the West Side, around the corner from Pepe’s Chili Palor. Since Mrs. Pepe often baby-sat for us, we would return the favor, and it was while sitting for their daughter that I contracted the painful case of mumps that ‘Cita was still apologizing for.

I swelled up, Beth nursed me, I deflated; and went back to Osborne & Associates, hating every day of it. But during those years Beth and I were happy together. I knew that partly she had married me in order to be free of Reverend Colby, and in many ways she had replaced him with me. Nows if she had no mother, she at least had two fathers. As Kate grew, Beth lavished on the child all the attention she herself had lacked. I could see what was happening from the beginning: that Kate was being smothered with a maternal blanket of the heaviest weave. When she was nine, she had her first asthmatic attack.

These began in the winter of our ninth year of marriage, when something happened to Beth, a breakdown whose origins were both deep-seated and obscure. She withdrew into another world. I thought at first she must be having an affair with some other man, but I was wrong. She came home one evening and announced that she wanted a divorce. She was going to leave and take Kate with her. No amount of reasoning on my part could sway her from this stubborn course, but a friend of ours at Columbia persuaded her to see a psychiatrist. The cause of her morbidity became quickly apparent, and I met with the doctor to learn what he had discovered. Beth had lacked a mother, which had led to a hatred of the father. I had replaced the father, and now her subconscious was transferring the hatred to me.

We got through it. She became whole again, became the Beth I had known, and we even joked about her having the nine-year itch. But there was still the problem of Kate’s attacks, which no amount of medical treatment was able to help, which nothing had helped until we had come to Cornwall Coombe and the Widow Fortune.

I felt the keel of the boat strike something, and I opened my eyes. Beth was smiling at me. “We’ve run aground, darling.”

The boat had nosed onto a sandy shoal, and I lifted an oar from the lock to push off. “No. Let’s stay here a little,” she suggested. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my trouser cuffs, and got out to pull the boat onto the shoal. I helped her ashore and we clambered onto the bank, where we spread the blanket and lay down.

The river formed a small cove, a secluded inlet screened by shadblow bushes and overhung with willow branches. It was the perfect spot, a country idyll all its own. We had left the radio in the boat and the music came as though from far away. I felt a pastoral serenity and peace that communicated itself to me through the lazy drone of the bees working the patches of meadow flowers close by, the sunlight trembling on the pool below and flickering in the leaves overhead.

In the distance, I heard the sound of gunshots, and I realized we were very likely trespassing in Old Man Soakes’s preserves. One of the boys was probably after squirrels in the woods. There were several more shots; then the air became still once more. We took off our clothes and slid down the clay bank into the water and swam, then lay on the shoal to dry ourselves off. Back on the bank, I moved the blanket even farther under cover, and we made love in God’s great outdoors.

“What do you talk about when you and the ladies get together?”

“Oh, you know-girl talk.”

“Mrs. Brucie and Mrs. Green are hardly girls.” We had put our clothes on again, and were lying together on the blanket, I with my head back against a fallen log. Beth said, “Mostly we’re talking about selling their quilts.”

“Selling them?”

“Mm-hm. Remember Mary Abbott from Bennington? She’s got that shop on Lexington, and I know if she put a couple in her window they’d sell in no time. I’m going to talk to her about it. And there’s all that carved bone jewelry, and the dolls. There’s a good market for that kind of handicraft work today. Look at the way they sell things from down in Appalachia.”

I agreed it sounded like a good idea. “What else do you talk about?”

“Men.”

“Come on.”

“Don’t you find the Widow fascinating?”

“Mm-hm.”

“The things she knows. I don’t mean just cooking and sewing, but all that herbal business and her cures.” She was playing with the little red bag hung around my neck. “It’s really working, huh? Let me see.” She inspected my wart, then kissed my finger.

I leaned to brush a leaf that had fallen on her shoulder. As I pulled away again, she stopped me with her hand.

“Ned?”

“Mm?”

A look came over her face, one I did not immediately understand. “Would you like to have another child?”

“Us? We can’t-”

She nodded eagerly. “The Widow says we might be able to. She’s got a remedy. Wouldn’t you like it-a baby brother for Kate?”

“Hey-wait a minute. Not so fast. What kind of remedy?”

“I don’t know. One of these elixirs she makes. She says that often it works. Mrs. Thomas has wanted a baby for the longest time, and she couldn’t have one, until the Widow had her and Mr. Thomas taking something. Now she’s pregnant.”

“Aren’t we sort of old to start the nursery business all over again-even if the Widow’s elixir worked?”

“We’re not exactly ready for Sun City. I’m not about to go through the change of life. Kate will be married in no time-darling, she will. And-”

“What?”

“I’d like to be a mother again. Once more, while there’s still time. Oh Ned, I want it. Your child. A son.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I had put the idea out of my mind for so long that it felt like a completely new one. And what if the Widow failed? What if Beth’s hopes were raised and we couldn’t produce? And whose fault would it be? Beth with her obstetrical problems or me with my mumps? I suggested tests; let a medical man determine the case before-

No, she said. Stubborn Beth. No doctor-the Widow.

“Well,” I said. “Well.” I grinned, then kissed her, a tacit submission to her wishes. I guessed the spare room could become a nursery, if between us we could provide an occupant. I kissed her again, and decided we had had the perfect afternoon. When we spoke of it later, it became That Day, one I’ve relived many times since; and I sometimes wonder if she has too.

I decided to go that evening to Saxony and talk to Mrs. O’Byrne about the slates for the studio roof. A sirocco-like breeze had come up when I left Beth and drove out along the Old Sallow Road, and the sun was dropping behind the cornfields on my left as I headed toward the Lost Whistle Bridge. Coming over the rise, I looked down on the panorama of the Tatum farm, its barn and sheds already becoming dark shapes on the hill. Across the road lay the edge of Soakes’s Lonesome, with the river winding along its farther side.

Passing the Tatum house, I noticed that the fire under Irene’s soap kettle was cold. Figures were moving in the front parlor where the lighted windows cast their shadows on the porch. In the drive were several vehicles, and the Widow’s little mare stood between the buggy shafts. Silently wishing the ladies a pleasant evening of quilting, I continued along past the woods. When I passed the next bend, I saw the peddler, Jack Stump, on his rig. I tooted the horn as I went by, and he waved. Glancing in the mirror, I saw him trundle the cart over the gully and pull it up among the trees.

I could feel the wind buffeting my car as I drove onto the covered bridge. There were still figures hunched over some work on the Soakeses’ jetty, where the skiff was again tied up. Curious to see what they were doing, I stopped halfway across, took the binoculars from the glove compartment, and got out to look through the latticework that trussed the bridge.

Leaning on the railing between the cross-trussings, I adjusted my lenses and brought the group into close view. I recognized Old Man Soakes himself, and the boys I had fought with that morning. There were ducks in the water, and I realized they were not live ducks at all, but decoys, attached to strings. It was the manufacture of these fake birds that the Soakeses were engaged in, the father cutting canvas sections from a pattern, one of the boys sewing them together, another stuffing them with some sort of material. The one sewing was using a sailmaker’s curved needle to stitch up the seam along the back.

Twenty minutes later I was in Saxony, and I stopped at a drugstore and looked up the name O’Byrne. The drug clerk gave me directions and I located the house a short distance away.

Mrs. O’Byrne was amiable and friendly, and readily disposed to sell me the slates, which were piled out behind the garage. With the wind whipping her skirts, she took me out to view the slates, and she showed me where the breezeway had collapsed between the house and the “summer kitchen,” as she called the large shed that had once been connected to the main structure.

“I figured when that rooftree came down, there wasn’t any point in rebuildin’.” Besides, she said, she was alone, and couldn’t afford any household repairs. I decided the price of slates had just gone up. But they were the proper size and color, each drilled with holes for nailing, so I bought forty of them. When I had loaded them in the car trunk, I wrote out a check for the figure she asked.

Was I, she wondered, interested in old clocks? She had a particularly fine one which she would like to sell, a genuine signed Tiffany. I said I might be interested, and she took me into the house to show it to me.

The clock was a beauty, black onyx and ormolu, with works that made a pleasant ticking sound, and a delicate chime. I offered her a hundred and twenty-five dollars and she took it.

While I wrote out a second check, Mrs. O’Byrne quizzed me about life in Cornwall Coombe: how long had we lived there; did we raise corn; was our daughter in school there; did I know an old lady over there somewheres who birthed babies — she must be passed away by now. No, I said, the Widow Fortune was very much alive. Well, Mrs. O’Byrne said, she was competition for Dr. Bonfils, who lived here in Saxony. Yes, the doctor had treated our Kate several times.

Then: “Have you come across someone named Gracie Everdeen?”

Yes; in a way, I said. Did Mrs. O’Byrne know her?

“Indeed I did. She stayed with me most of one whole summer back some years ago.” She spoke with interest of the girl, whom she immediately dubbed “that poor unfortunate creature.”

“She was the most melancholy thing I ever saw. She just appeared one day, right there at the door. I was canning cherries, so it must have been late June. Usually I’m able to can all season as the various things come along, but just about that time I’d boiled up a mess of corned beef. I was carrying the kettle out to dump the water between the bricks when I slipped and scalded my foot. That would have put an end to my canning that year, except here came Grace Everdeen looking for work. I told her I couldn’t pay much, but she could have board, and sleep in the little attic room. That was fine with her, she said.

“So she moved her few things up to the attic and looked after the house pretty well till I could get back on my feet again. She canned the quinces when they came in, and the tomatoes, and all. She was a good worker and a neat one but, as I say, melancholy.”

Mrs. O’Byrne shook her head. The wind had caught a shutter and was rapping it against the clapboards; she asked me to oblige her by securing it. When I had done so, she continued her story.

“She’d been in some trouble, and she’d run off. I took it she’d done a deal of travelin’ and was gone most of two years. But now she’d come back. She had a sweetheart over in the Coombe and she wanted him, though how she expected she might have him, looking as she did, I’ll never know. In any case, there was another woman.”

Who, I asked, might that have been? Mrs. O’Byrne did not know. “But she cursed the pair of them, and I could hear her up in the attic crying to break your heart. Then she wrote him a letter, which she asked me to check for spelling, demanding he come and meet her. I stamped and mailed the letter for her, and by well into July-we were canning peaches, I remember-there still wa’n’t any answer. Then one day it come. That evenin’ she went to meet him. What happened then I got from Mrs. Lake.”

“Mrs. Lake?”

“Old Mrs. Lake that lived by the bridge. She’s dead nine years at Easter, and the house was pulled down. In any case. She lived close by the Lost Whistle, as they call it ‘cross river. Mrs. Lake heard and saw, and when she came to visit me, if I didn’t see, I heard.”

Mrs. O’Byrne having heard from Mrs. Lake, now I was to hear from Mrs. O’Byrne. Roger Penrose had ridden out on his horse to the bridge, where Grace was waiting for him on the other side, but neither of them, for unknown reasons, would cross to meet the other. Roger begged Grace to return over the river, while she demanded he come to her. But the meeting was a stalemate; Roger rode away without Gracie.

They continued to rendezvous through the summer, always in the evening and always with the same result. Thwarted, Roger became angrier and angrier with Grace, while she, standing at the bridge portal, shouted wild and passionate pleas through cupped hands. It was to no avail; still the lovers did not see each other.

“Mrs. Lake said their voices echoed somethin’ fierce through the bridge, and the pain of them two was somethin’ terrible to hear, like wounded animals. In any case, raspberries came and went, and then we was into blueberries and damson plums, and by this time I was off my crutches, so I did up the gooseberries and currants from the fields, and that must have been September, for that’s when gooseberries is ripe. One evening I decided to walk down to the bridge and have a look for myself. I left before Grace had redded up the dishes, and Mrs. Lake and I hid on her porch, with the light off, and here comes Gracie, with a scarf wrapped around her head, standing this side, while there he came ahorseback-I could hear the hoofs as he rode along the road, then cloppin’ up on the approach. Then he stops and calls: ‘Grace, come home!’

“Finally, he must have gotten mad beyond reason, for now over he came at a gallop. Grace tried to run, but he pulled alongside o’ her and scooped her up right out o’ the roadway, and carried her back across the bridge.”

“Back to Cornwall?”

She sniffed. “Not likely. They went off onto the side of the road, but they was just there on the other side, for we could hear the horse whinnying in the orchard. ‘Well,’ I said to Mrs. Lake, ‘if it come to country matters, I must give Grace her notice in the morning.’

“Then, what do you know, here comes Gracie afoot, back across the bridge, and he’s riding off down the road. Her head was still wrapped in her scarf, and she was so unhappy I didn’t have the heart to send her away. I brought her home and put her to bed. Next day the old lady comes.”

“The Widow Fortune?”

“If that’s how she’s called. Rides up in a buggy, and Grace says can she use the parlor. Which I let her, even to permitting her to offer tea and such. I stayed upstairs, but I could tell the old lady was most sympathetic to Grace’s situation-a kind soul, if you don’t mind. Then she left.”

Grace was now driven to the extremest measures. First she told Mrs. O’Byrne she would leave, then she swore she could not, then she didn’t know what to do. In the end, however, she went away, never to return.

“‘Twas the night of full moon, I remember that,” Mrs. O’Byrne continued. “Grace went out again in the evenin’, and that was the last I saw of her. She just left everything here and went. Never came back for her things, neither. Her sweetheart died, didn’t he?”

I said yes, wondering how she had come by this particular piece of news. I related what I had learned from Worthy about the horse accident, and Mrs. O’Byrne’s look was woeful as she opened the front door for me. “But you didn’t say-is Grace there still? Does she fare well?”

“She’s dead, too.”

“Oh, no-you don’t say! Poor thing. Still, I suppose she’s better off. I wouldn’t want to go through life suffering like poor Grace did.”

I stowed the Tiffany clock in the trunk, along with the slates, while the wind, which had increased perceptibly, drove everything before it.

“Hurricane weather,” Mrs. O’Byrne called. “Stop by again.” She battled the door shut against the gale.

Driving back toward the bridge, I looked at the sky. The moon, round and white, shed a strange light over the landscape, while across its face drifted an intermittent cheesy curd, lending the white light a greenish-yellow cast. Lightning flickered bluely on the horizon, and a steady wind whipped the grass along the roadside.

The car tires beat a tattoo on the bridge planking as I crossed. Emerging from the farther end onto the Old Sallow Road, I could feel the wind take the car again. The air sizzled intermittently, as if wired with a network of faulty electrical connections. I made the turns slowly, keeping the car toward the center of the winding road as I passed the Tatum orchard. I felt melancholy, thinking back over the story of Grace Ever-deen. I found it strange and sad, and a little mystifying.

The lights were still burning at Irene’s house, and as I rounded the next bend, the embankment I had passed earlier was now on my left, and above me I glimpsed an edge of tree-tops waving wildly in the wind. On the other side of the road, the cornfields were whipped to a frenzy; the wind drove leaves and debris along the rutted track leading up to the house, scuttling them around the wheels of the parked cars and the buggy, past the soap kettle, spiraling ashes and carrying all up the steps onto the porch itself, where the parlor windows were glowing.

I slowed as the wind buffeted the car again, and a large branch broke from a tree and flew onto the road. I swerved, then stopped. Leaving the motor running, I got out and pulled the branch to the side of the road. Straightening, I heard what sounded like a cry above the sound of the wind.

As I kicked the branch into the gully, lightning flashed again, a sharp electric current of blue that turned the sky a sickly green color. Then suddenly, above me, at the top of the embankment, materializing out of the darkness, there appeared what I immediately thought must be the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome. Ghastly, eerie, the figure was a gray ashen hue, the white garments flapping like cerements, a specter returned from the grave. I have never seen a ghost, nor do I believe that ghosts exist, but at that moment I was absolutely certain I was looking at one. It seemed to glow against the lurid sky, hovering some twelve feet above me, the body cut off by the edge of the embankment, head upraised, arms outstretched. I tried to tell myself I was imagining all this, but there it stood, a haggard, silvery shape, like some ghoul risen from the dead.

It turned on me the most terrible countenance I had ever seen. An appalling face, the flesh was as white as the clothes, except for the dark recesses of the eyes and the red, grinning mouth. It was this grin that made it seem more horrible, scarcely a smile at all, but the parody of one. A poor, painted smile, witless, demented, grim, the inane smile of a rag doll. Dark gouts of liquid erupted from the corners of the mouth while one hand-feeble, supplicating-lifted in a pitiful gesture and tore at the grin, as though to strip it away.

Then the haggard thing performed a grotesque reel, a dance of agony, twirling slowly, slowly, head once more thrown back to the night sky.

In another moment it had disappeared, vanished as though, in the tradition of ghosts, it had dematerialized. I ran and shut off the car motor, then laboriously made my way up the embankment, using rocks and projecting roots to clamber up the steep incline and onto the grassy plateau at the top.

There was nothing, only the swath of wind-whipped grass, the edge of the woods beyond, and, beyond that, darkness. I called out. No answer came, and no sign at all of the white apparition.

The clouds scraped across the face of the moon. Suddenly bright and shiny as it moved slowly toward the west, it again poured a dazzling white over the dark landscape. I thought how big and bright and shining it was, and how far away, noting its visible geography, its clearly delineated craters, mountains, deserts, seas. Again I lowered my gaze, taking one last look for that other, impossible shape I had seen. And standing there, listening to the wind, I felt sure this was no ghost, no supernatural creature, but something as real as the moon itself, real enough to have been human and alive.’

12

Real enough; but had it been alive? Or was I falling under the influence of Cornish witch tales and charms? I thought of telling Beth of the strange apparition, then, remembering the old trouble, and how easily influenced she was, I decided against it. Better to let the village weave its more salutary spells, whose good effects were so clearly already at work upon her. I was persuaded that it was better to leave my tale of the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome for another, more appropriate time.

The next day, Monday, I worked in the studio sanding the gesso panel I would use for my painting of the covered bridge. When Worthy came, I interrupted my work to help him tackle the roofing job. He was moody again today, with little to say regarding the excursion to Nonesuch Farm, other than that Kate had enjoyed it. I made no allusion to the strange event of last night, and between us we limited ourselves to the scantest of small talk until Beth called us to come in. We ate lunch from folding tables in the bacchante room so we could watch the replays of the Olympic events. Mark Spitz had captured another gold medal, and they were saying he would take an even seven and make Olympic history; I wished him the joy of all that gold.

When we had eaten, I left Worthy to complete the roofing job alone and, taking my water-color equipment, I set out for the Lost Whistle Bridge. On a sudden thought, I pulled in at the Pettinger farm to have a word with Worthy’s mother and father. The place wasn’t much by anybody’s standards, not “all-electric” like the Hookes’s, and without indoor plumbing. Like the rest of Cornwall Coombe, the Pettingers had planted corn wherever the ground might bear it. There was a well and a springhouse, a chicken run, and a barn. If Fred Minerva was jokingly referred to as the biggest hard-luck farmer in the community, Wayne Pettinger surely was the poorest. He had two other sons to help him with the work, but it quickly became evident that he begrudged the time “the boy” was giving to others, myself included.

Both of them, the mother and the father, had the tired, careworn look of the workaday farmer fighting a losing battle against the soil, and neither seemed inclined to discuss Worthy’s trouble when I bearded them in the kitchen, but only sat bleakly and with unswerving gaze as they heard me out. I told them I felt that Worthy should be given a chance, that a great disservice would be done in stopping his schooling,

Mr. Pettinger was angry and adamant. The boy was full of fool notions. Theirs was a poor farm, but with seven years of Worthy’s being Harvest Lord it could become a rich one. Men would come and work it for him and not charge for labor; it could be the place they’d always dreamed it might be. Honor had been conferred; but no, the boy didn’t want honors, he wanted to be off with them hippies over to Danforth. Mr. Pettinger damned left and right: damned machinery, damned modern methods, damned folks who wasn’t satisfied with what they had but was so greedy they had to have more. Kids today didn’t know how well-off they was.

He turned to Mrs. Pettinger. “It’s your fault, givin’ him learnin’. There’s where the trouble starts-never should’ve let him go to school.” He clumped out to the barn, leaving me facing his wife, whose eyes were now streaming.

Clutching her red hands on the oilcloth-topped table, she confided to me that she had heard Worthy planning to run off. I replied that I thought young people should be allowed to do with their lives as they saw fit. She listened with a woebegone expression, dabbing at her eyes with her apron.

“He don’t laugh no more,” she said. “He was the most agreeable of all of ‘em, you never seen a boy so pleasing, and so easy to please.” Her smile was frail as she stared at her hands. “And he’s bright, too. Not like-them.” She jerked her head toward the dooryard where Worthy’s brothers were shoveling manure. “Seems like he’s always had his nose into everything.”

But then she’d heard him, out behind the mulch heap, telling Junior Tatum how he planned to run off to Danforth if he couldn’t go to college. Her heart had been sorely tried. Planning to leave the village, leave Cornwall Coombe. Had she failed? Hadn’t he been raised right?

Finding the mother’s grief hard to witness, I tried to speak some words of comfort, but she continued as though I weren’t there.

“I tell myself, hope and custom will be my stren’th. But he’s a mind of his own; he’s different. And in Cornwall Coombe it don’t pay to be different. You got to go by what folks say, and what they think.” She rose. “And what they do,” she added. I sensed that these words were for my benefit as well, as though through some instinctive kindness she did not want me to make a similar mistake.

She followed me to the door, then seized my hand impulsively and said with a passionate look, “Help him, mister, can’t you?”

I spent the afternoon by the bridge, before my easel, my thoughts on the boy. Last night’s hot wind still continued, and it made outdoor painting difficult, but I persevered until I had accomplished two passable water-color studies. Shortly after four o’clock, I packed up my gear, stowed it in the car, and drove back up the Old Sallow Road.

I turned the bend where I had seen the “ghost” the night before, and pulled onto the shoulder. I climbed the embankment and made a careful investigation of the terrain, noting that the grass had been trampled, which bolstered my theory that what I had seen was no supernatural being, but human.

With a backward glance at the Tatum house across the way, I crossed the patch of trodden ground and approached the edge of Soakes’s Lonesome. From within its shadowy recesses came the plaintive barking of a fox. Birds overhead chirped and sang as they flitted from branch to branch. Beyond the trees I could just make out the flat blue plane of water that was the river, and heard the dull chug of the Soakeses’ skiff from the farther shore. The heat of the day was gradually cooling, condensing into mists along the bank, only to be unraveled by the wind.

I moved farther into the wood, resolved to find last night’s phantom or, if I could not, at least to discover the more substantial form Jack Stump had described to me. Parrot-green ferns fanned a toothy pattern in the wavering light. Beyond, the darker green was laurel and alder, with sprawling thickets of gooseberry bramble whose vicious barbs caused me to wend my way with care. Passing from glade to glade, I felt the ground give softly and noiselessly beneath my feet, a carpet of pine needles, strewn with wind-tumbled cones.

I heard a faint rush of water: a creek. I continued on till I discovered it winding among the trees, then began following the water’s upstream course, stepping from hummock to hummock across pools on whose dimly reflective surfaces water creatures skittered. My feet flattened a patch of skunk cabbage, the squashed leaves emitting a faintly sour stench.

I heard the snap of a twig behind me. I whirled. Something moved in a thicket. I waited, then decided it was the fox, wary and watchful; I continued on.

Now I was deep within the woods, girdled round by leafy shade, stilled by a silence that was almost uncanny. It grew dimmer. The tree trunks were black, their malachite moss bled of color. Somewhere a woodpecker rapped; crickets sounded; occasionally I heard the goitered throb of a bullfrog.

The terrain became hilly and rocky as I proceeded into a remote arm of the woods, and I discovered a worn foot trail which I now proceeded to follow. I kept a keen eye out as I went along the trail, and it was lucky that I did so, for otherwise I might have died-as Clemmon Fortune had-lost within those woods. Certainly I would not have discovered the trap that lay waiting for me.

The trail forked, and I had slowed, wondering which of the two paths to take, when I saw it, carefully concealed, a small, unnatural-looking mound where pine needles and other debris had been sprinkled for camouflage. I halted within feet of it, my eye tracing the tail of chain links winding through the leaves, and the unsprung jaws awaiting the foot of the unwary.

Choosing the left-hand fork, I stepped carefully around the trap, and continued along. The trail made a slight turning, and some low-growing branches partially obscured my way. I half crouched, pushing aside the branches, and when I had passed them I straightened-and walked almost into the bristly face of Old Man Soakes. In one hand was a shotgun; with the other he reached out and grabbed me around the throat and spun me up against the trunk of a tree. His arm pressed against my windpipe, intent, it appeared, on choking the life out of me. Through bulging eyes, I stared back at his angry face, the lips compressed with fierce determination, bits of white spittle along the lower one, his breath coming in spurts as he exerted a deadly pressure.

Releasing his hold enough to produce his knife-the large, sharp-edged one I had seen him using on the landing-he stuck its point against the side of my neck. I turned my head, trying to avoid not so much the knife as the rotten smell of his breath. His eyes looked crazed as he demanded to know what I was doing in the woods. I tried to pull away; the knife point held me as though driven through my neck into the trunk behind. There were footsteps; he looked away for a fraction of a second. I yanked my knee up and caught him in the crotch; he let go of me, his face going bloodless as he doubled over. I placed both hands against his shoulders and shoved, then lurched away. Roy Soakes was coming at a jog along the path ahead; I spun, racing back the way I had come. As Roy charged after me, I heard the old man curse him to get out of the way so he could get a clear shot. The shot came; and another. One spanged off a trunk near my head, the second went wild. A quick look behind told me Roy was hot on my heels, and I dashed pell-mell back down the trail. When I neared the fork, I made a quick leap over the trap, then ducked down the right-hand trail, not slowing until a cry reached my ears, followed by a loud metallic sound as Roy’s foot sprung the trap. I paused briefly until I heard the old man coming behind him, spouting foul oaths at Roy’s stupidity, and more as he tried to release the iron jaws.

I almost felt like whistling. Having moved the trap to catch the innocent and unsuspecting, Old Man Soakes had only snared one of his own brood. I hurried along the trail, occasionally looking back over my shoulder as I plunged still deeper into the innermost reaches of Soakes’s Lonesome. I looked up at the sky, trying to find my bearings. A bird slid downward in a wide-winged dive, and I turned first one way, then another, not knowing where I was heading, trying to avoid the malignant tangles of growth blocking my every path. Coils of creepers wound about my feet, dark bramble thickets rose before me. Heedless of the thorns tearing at my legs, I lifted my arms to protect my face and forced my way through.

I came to another stream and crossed it, stepping from one grassy hummock to another. My foot slipped, there was a sucking noise as it slid into cold, thick muck. I pulled; the foot held fast. A moldy stench arose from the mud as I bent and tried to release myself. At last the foot came free and I raced on.

I found another trail, a narrow corridor allowing me passage; I followed it blindly. The country was utterly unfamiliar. I could tell only that I was on an upward climb. Ahead lay an outcropping of shale, a humped ridge of rock that sprang half buried from the earth. I lay down, panting from my exertions, batting at the insects swarming in a thick damp cloud around my head, settling on my neck and throat. I tried to cover them, felt the sticky wetness. My hand came away with blood where the old man’s knife had jabbed me.

I rested until my breath returned. Then my eye strayed to the tree which grew, it seemed, almost from the very rock I rested on. It was a tall pine, with an abundant growth of branches towering some fifty feet into the air. On the trunk, as high as a short man might reach, was a naked spot where the bark had been cut away. I got up and went to it, putting my fingers to the open wood, still viscous with sap.

One of Jack Stump’s blazes: the tall tree on the rocky knoll. What I had sought with purpose I had found by accident. I circled the knoll, looking for a second blaze. I discovered it below me, on the left side of the outcropping. Now I could make out the trail which wound around the knoll and back into the woods. I pushed on ahead, looking for the next blaze.

The terrain was sloping downward now; lichen-spotted boulders lay strewn along my path like fallen meteors. I could hear the gentle purl of the stream on my right. Overhead the treetops again closed above me in a vast net of wind-tossed, soughing branches; the sky grew dim.

Minutes later I was still following the hatchet marks, pushing my way through a waste of tall pines where, on either side of me, more outcroppings of rock rose in sedimentary convolutions where the earth had heaved them up in wall-like formations. Proceeding toward them, I saw a deep V between the two sections, through which the stream flowed, more placid now as it widened its course and sluiced past.

I paused again, watching the dark flow of water, listening. A bird called, another replied. Then, silence; the rush of the wind. I had the eerie sensation I was being followed, and not by my friend with the shotgun. My imagination began to work. Shadowy shapes, hostile and sinister, loomed. Again I conjured up the figure of last evening, the whitened face, the red grinning mouth, the pale, supplicating hand.

I passed through the gap, footing my way over some rocks in the stream bed, until I could reach the bank again. It was there, standing on a rock in midstream, that I heard the scream.

If it was a scream. Though I thought of it as such, it was utterly unlike any sound I had ever heard. Scream? Cry? Lament? I turned my head one way and the other, cupping my ears, trying to determine its origin. It seemed to come from several directions at once, and I decided this was caused by the shale walls rising at precipitous angles on either side of the stream to form a sort of echo chamber. Was it a moan? It seemed to float along the current of the stream, rising, then dipping, then falling away to nothing, only to return again, a terrible, inhuman sound.

I leaped from the stone onto the bank, advancing through dense growth, while the voice, if it was a voice, always increased in volume. Another few steps brought me to the edge of a wide clearing, where I froze in astonishment.

The trees bordering the clearing were not pines, but white birches, the silvery bark curled in papery spirals, revealing the tan underside. This grove of pale trunks formed a ring around the grassy open space, and in the purplish light I saw at the center of this space another stream issuing forth from a wide pool. It was not the pool that made me stare, but the tree that grew beside it, for it was from this tree, I was certain, that the cries came. It grew above the clearing like some gaunt, storm-twisted Titan, a once-lofty tree, now lifting no more than three or four dead and leafless branches toward the sky.

Again I heard the cry, and I approached, circling the tree until I was looking at it from the opposite side. From gnarled roots to blasted top, the large trunk was split open, a dark wound where a bolt of lightning had rent it apart and fire had burned its center out, leaving it hollow. A mesh of thick vines grew upward from the base, crawling along the withered trunk, sutures trying to close the gaping wound where the sides lay back like flaps of charred flesh. The wind streamed through the gap, tugging the cuffs of my wet pants, brushing at the grass, tearing at the leaves of the new growth around the tree. Then I heard the cry again, and once more I froze, for I discovered the thing that voiced it, almost hidden behind the moving greenery.

I was looking at a human skull, and it was from behind the parted jaws that the screams came.

There is always something about the slow workings of nature upon death’s victim as it eats away the mortal flesh and reveals the armature beneath that is shocking to the living man, knowing that he, too, must at some time fall similar prey. But to come across a skull staring from the heart of a hollow tree screaming maledictions gives rise to a greater fear; and I was afraid. Still, I found it impossible to run, and I remained where I stood, listening to the monstrous thing as it harried me, now screaming, now sighing demoniacally.

My eye was caught for a second by a black form floating down from the sky, a crow which silently glided to a branch of one of the birches across the grove, watching me as the cries rose in the clearing. Then, the wind suddenly dropping, the cries dropped with it, and I realized what was happening. It was the wind itself that caused the sounds. Pouring through the gap behind, streaming across the clearing, the draft was sucked in through the open base of the tree and funneled upward through this flue to where the skull lay caught in the vise-like grip of the new growth; the sound came from the head itself, a freakish woodwind pipe whose stops were the decayed knotholes and whose horn was the gaping jaws.

I came nearer and pulled the vines aside. The skull lay slightly to one side, the rear of the brainpan wedged deeply into the open cleft and locked in place by the growing tendrils. A skull that was large and thick, with a slightly Neanderthal slope to the brow: the cheekbones were prominent, the jaw was large, and what teeth remained were unevenly spaced. A spider had spun a web across one eye socket, while slugs had trailed shiny tracks across the temple. Looking closer, I saw a long cranial fracture, running from the temple to the bridge where the nose had once been. I judged the skull to have been split by some heavy object. I tried to dislodge it, but it seemed to have been forcefully jammed into the hollow interior, which held it fast.

Below the skull, the rest of the skeleton remained intact, reclining backward as though in repose, shaping itself to the angle of the trunk itself, the encroaching vines still giving it human shape. The hands were long and large, the bones heavy and coarse-looking; the man had been slightly under average height. Kneeling, I now examined the lower extremities, which, comparably large, were held pinioned in the tangle of growth.

Again the wind; again the thing gave utterance, finding its tongue as the current swept in around my face and was pulled upward. I stepped back, one foot almost slipping into the pool of water. Making a small circle around the base of the tree, I tried to probe the secret of this grotesque discovery. In that fiercely defiant expression there was both mystery and revelation. Proof of a life snuffed out, obliterated in a moment of denial or protest. Dimly in the distance I heard the fox barking. Once, then twice more. Sly fox, wary enough to know the deceitful heart of man, to know that in these woods lurked both the hunted and the hunters.

The crow made a lonely, plaintive sound, bleak as death. I felt very alone in the clearing. I looked back at the tree again. If this was Jack’s “ghost,” what then was the apparition I had been confronted by last night? Yet if that being was phantom, this was not, this nameless carcass in the tree whose death had been managed in the grimmest fashion. Who beside myself had chanced on it? Were these the bones of the missing revenuer? How long had they lain here?

How many winters had sifted snow through those dead sockets, how many springs thawed the ice that rimed the jaws, summers cured the narrow ribcage, lying snug and sepulchered in its charred catacomb? Free at last of worms and scavengers, mere instrument of the capricious wind that even now rose and caught at the imprisoning vines. Again the skull sounded its doleful lament, while on its perch above, the black crow brooded over the spectacle, that victim of so sorry a plight, warning against trespass in Soakes’s Lonesome.

13

During the next several days, I had little chance to dwell on my shocking discovery in Soakes’s Lonesome. Nor did I discuss it with Beth, not wanting to worry her with further distressing tales of grisly woodland apparitions. Though we still rose together and breakfasted together, we usually parted company early in the morning, I to my particular pursuits, she to hers. She would drive Kate over to Greenfarms School, return to do the housework; then, when things were in order, she busied herself organizing a sort of village crafts guild whose products she had arranged to sell in Mary Abbott’s New York shop. These affairs sometimes took her to the kitchen of one lady or another, and often I found our house curiously deserted. I realized that I was still accustomed to the bustle of the city, and though I pretended I was becoming used to the country, the emptiness and silence at times were disconcerting. Still, there was much to be done, and I limited myself to afternoons at my painting, first taking care of the countless chores that needed seeing to.

The windstorm having uprooted a maple in the back yard, earth had to be dug from the meadow to fill the hole, the tree sawed up. Storm windows were ordered. I talked to an insurance man down in the county seat about an appraisal on our new furnishings. I sent away for some pamphlets and literature on organic gardening. I looked at station wagons for Beth over on the turnpike. I got myself a bicycle. And I bought Kate a horse.

It was not the doctor but the Widow Fortune who sanctioned this, her discussions with Kate being as effective as her various medicines. Magically, the asthma disappeared. Though I never discovered what the old woman did to effect the cure, a miraculous one it was. And as Beth and I came to trust her, we came more to trust in our own safety and happiness.

As we trusted in the fact of the baby, and that the baby would come as promised. Our daily vitamin doses had been supplemented by a bottle of some pleasant-tasting mixture that the Widow had brought-with directions-to our house. And though we joked about taking it I could see how profoundly Beth wished for the fulfillment of her dream of a son, and how profoundly she believed in the Widow’s power to make it possible. It was not misplaced belief.

Thinking back, I suppose those first weeks of early autumn in Cornwall Coombe were the happiest we had ever known together. We seemed to have undergone some subtle transformation that had drawn something to ourselves, both separately and as a family, from the land and the people, who daily were more inclined to accept us as part of their lives. And daily I would see the changes wrought in Beth. She slept better, the smudges under her eyes disappeared, and the lines in her forehead. The brisk air did something to her appetite; she ate sitting down, for a change, and started putting on weight. Her skin took on a fresher look, and I began calling her Peaches because her cheeks reminded me of one, with that same rosy glow.

Kate, too, seemed to be enjoying the beneficial effects of country life. It was a pleasure to see her able to enjoy animals, having been denied them so long. Fred Minerva had steered me to a man in a nearby town who was selling his farm and moving to the city, and had several horses for sale. The mare I ended up buying was large for Kate, but I decided she would soon grow to the proper size. The farmer had warned me that the horse was inclined to be headstrong, and when I presented her to Kate I cautioned her not to get carried away.

It was inevitable that the mare, whom Kate named Trementagne-a French word for north wind she had found somewhere that she shortened to “Tremmy”-would assume an important place in her life, but she seemed interested in sharing her love for the horse with us, and eager to show off the skills she was rapidly acquiring in Greenfarms’ ”equitation” classes.

Not since the Agnes Fair had she evidenced any symptoms of her tormenting illness. She was healthier and happier and never appeared in the morning with the out-of-sorts expression I used to dread. Watching her, I thought I could discern small but obvious changes in her. She was becoming a young woman. She was losing that gangling, knobby look, and, perhaps because of her association with Worthy, she seemed less shy and diffident.

A frequent visitor to our house, the Widow Fortune might stop by, usually late in the afternoon, to watch Kate ride her horse in the field below the stables, or I would hear her and Kate talking in the kitchen, and I knew she was helping Kate allay the fears that brought on the asthma attacks. After a cup of tea, she would take her splint basket and hurry away to nurse old Mrs. Mayberry; then Kate would come out to the studio and watch me paint until Beth returned home.

In the evening, the weather remaining fine, we would barbecue steaks on the terrace, often joined by Worthy Pettinger, for whom Beth and I decided Kate was developing a strong attachment.

Viewed in the light of what occurred later, it was a fool’s paradise, but I could not have known that then. Fool’s paradise in those weeks was still Heart’s Desire, and it seemed nothing could possibly happen to spoil the idyll of our new existence. Above all, and very real, was a profound sense of belonging not only to my family but to the villagers, to the countryside, and, though I did not till it, to the land.

Yet while I worked about the house and at my easel, the grisly souvenir in the hollow tree remained in my thoughts, that and the “gray ghost,” as I had come to regard that other, even more puzzling apparition. If I failed to fathom the unfathomable, it was perhaps not so much due to my lack of mental agility as that I did not feel I could confide my thoughts to anyone. I did not want to tell anyone I had been seeing ghosts, nor did I want people saying I was a fool. Whatever I said, and to whom, it was bound to be repeated, and I hated the thought of these farmer people thinking I was as moon mad as they, and as superstitious.

There were, however, two with whom I was anxious to talk: Robert Dodd and Jack Stump. Robert, with Maggie, was out of town-visiting his university, with which he kept up considerable contact. And the peddler had not as yet finished his territory circuit, for nowhere in the village was his tin-pan clatter to be heard, and I listened in vain.

The only other shadow darkening my existence at that period was the boy, Worthy Pettinger. In its quiet but firm way, the village was adamant on the subject of his “accepting the honor,” as the phrase was couched. Worthy must and would be the Young Lord in the Corn Play. Though he came regularly to our house after school to do chores, he was now invariably late, invariably offhand, and, when I asked him what was troubling him, invariably reticent.

It was hard to know what to do; how could we help when we didn’t really know what the problem was? My own assessment was that the boy’s dark distress stemmed from a reluctance to commit himself to Cornwall Coombe for a seven-year tenure as Harvest Lord-no matter what honors or wealth accrued from this-when it was his desire to be quit of village encumbrances and old-fashioned ways. Who could blame him for being “newfangled”? But if the father continued to hold to his parochial attitude, forcing him to “accept the honor,” there seemed little to be done.

One noontime, having left Worthy using a chain saw on the uprooted tree, I decided to pay a visit to the Hookes. I found the sketch I had done of Sophie at the Widow’s Sunday sociable, put it in a little frame I dug out of a box, and drove out to the Hooke farm.

When I got there, I left the car on the road and walked down the drive circling the house, having learned that the back door was where Cornwall Coombe folk paid weekday calls. Approaching the open Dutch door at the kitchen steps, I was greeted by a flying object, a great squawking feathered projectile, which came flying through the opening. I watched the chicken land, then, wings flapping, run off into a patch of nasturtiums. In another moment, Justin’s smiling face appeared.

“Come in, come in,” he said heartily, reaching to shake my hand and opening the lower half of the door for me.

“Anybody home beside the chickens?” I asked, mounting the steps.

“Tossing a hen through the door brings good luck. Sophie, look who’s here.” Sophie rose from the table where she had been working on some ledgers and offered me a cup of coffee. When she had moved the ledgers aside and set the cup on the table, I presented her with my gift. She took the package and looked from me to it and back again.

“Go ahead, Sophie,” Justin urged, “open it.”

A little gasp escaped her lips as she undid the paper and saw the sketch under the glass. She looked at me gratefully. “Nobody ever drew me before,” she said simply.

Justin came around the table to see. “Why, it’s Sophie to the life.” He pulled out a chair for me to sit. I put sugar in my coffee, and cream from the pitcher Sophie had brought from the refrigerator. Justin asked where she would like the sketch hung.

“In the living room, I think.”

He went to find a hammer, and Sophie led me into the front room, where she picked out a spot for the drawing. “Sophie,” Justin said when he had tapped in a hook and hung the sketch, “take him and show him the upstairs. When you’ve done, Ned, come have a look around the place. I’ve got to get back to the men or they’ll be sitting on their hands.” He clumped down the hall in his heavy boots and Sophie preceded me up the stairs.

I glimpsed a crisp white bedroom with a large four-poster bed similar to the one Beth and I slept in. Sophie took me in and showed me the crocheted counterpane her grandmother had made, pointing out the fine workmanship. “It’s called popcorn stitch.” The room had a serene but solid look to it, with printed curtains at the window, and at the foot of the bed a blanket chest painted with flowers to match the curtains. When I admired it, she blushed, saying she had done it herself.

“You’re very talented, Sophie.”

“But not like you.” A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and she stepped to the window, looking down at the barnyard. A hole had been dug along a strip of lawn between the house and the cornfield, and beside it stood a young tree, ready for planting. Justin came with a shovel, bent to set in the tree. Sophie turned back and said, “Could I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I have my egg money put aside, and I was wondering- How much would you charge to do a painting?”

“I’d love to paint you, Sophie.”

“Not me. Justin. I’d like a picture to hang over the mantel while he’s still Harvest Lord.”

I said I thought that was a fine idea, and that I would be happy to execute the commission. “It’s the first I’ve had.” But I added that since I did not enjoy doing studio portraits, I would want to find a natural spot, revealing of his character, to pose Justin in. She grew more excited at the idea and asked when I might begin.

“Well-I’ve got some commitments I’ve got to finish up for my gallery in New York first.”

Her face clouded. “How soon could you start?”

Since it seemed important to her that I paint it while the Harvest Lord was still in office-so to speak-I said I would begin some preliminary sketches as soon as possible.

She brought me back downstairs and into the kitchen again where the ledgers lay stacked on the table.

“Do you keep the books, Sophie?”

“Oh, yes. That’s my part. Or part of my part. Someone has to keep track of where the money goes.” She showed me one of the books, the neat columns of figures in her fine hand, the accounts payable, and the accounts receivable, which were apparently nil until the corn was cut.

“They’ll fill up by Harvest Home,” I said.

She closed the ledger and rubbed the tips of her fingers lightly over the gold stampwork on the front. “Yes,” she said softly. Impulsively she reached for my hand. “We’re so glad you’ve come to live in Cornwall. You’re the first outsiders we’ve had, and it’s going to be nice knowing you, and Beth, and your little girl.” She thanked me again for the drawing and said she hoped I would stop by anytime.

“I’m often out this way,” I told her. “I’m doing a painting of the bridge.”

“The Lost Whistle? That should be lovely.” But I saw her face cloud at the mention of the bridge, as though the place had unpleasant associations for her.

“Something wrong with the bridge?” I asked.

“N-no.” She spun, looked at the table. “Gosh, I’ve left the cream out to spoil.” She took the pitcher and held it up. It was of porcelain, shaped like a cow. The tail curled up for a handle and the cream poured out through the mouth.

“It was a wedding present. It comes from Tiffany’s. In New York? It’s a very fine store.”

Her ingenuousness regarding Gotham jewelers made me want to smile. Still, I noticed how she had changed the subject from the Lost Whistle Bridge. I admired the pitcher, saying it reminded me of La Vache Qui Rit, the Laughing Cow cheese Beth used to buy at the deli in New York. She put the pitcher in the refrigerator and sat at the table. When I left, she had begun going over her books again.

“Don’t forget,” she called after me, “about the painting, I mean.”

I found Justin still planting. Like me, he had lost a tree to the storm, and this one was to replace it. Laying his shovel aside, he took a box filled with ashes and sprinkled them around the balled-up roots, explaining that they made good fertilizer. He picked up his spade again and shoveled in the rest of the earth, tamping the dirt with his foot and, from time to time sighting along the narrow trunk to make sure it was straight. When the work was done, he stepped back, looking up at the bare branches.

“There’s a tree for next spring. Ought to bloom just about Spring Festival time.” When I asked what kind of tree it was, he said a flowering pear tree. Then, taking me by the arm, he led me on a tour of his domain, an obvious source of pride.

First he showed me the “blessing stone,” a large block of quarried granite set into the foundation of the barn, with the date 1689 marking the year of its construction. The fine old boards had never been painted but through the years had aged to a beautiful patina. Painting a barn, he said, was a kind of sacrilege.

He took me to the toolshed where all the implements were also dated, giving one the sense that their makers had intended them to be passed on, so that in the distant future by these simple artifacts the past might be better understood.

We saw the pigpens, the hayloft, the stables, all with plenty of light and ventilation, and everything neat as a pin, spruce and straight and clean, with none of the slump and sag of other farms in the community. Looking over the place, I thought- jealously, perhaps-how much greater was the legacy of Cornwall Coombe than was ours, we who had lived half our lives in the city. Here, all around us, was the richness of Justin’s heritage. It was plain to see that there was no master here but himself, and that he knew it; knew, too, what his forebears had bestowed.

He pushed his hat back on his head and looked at me, anxious that I should appreciate his fields for both their beauty and their worth. As I had seen him do before, he stood with feet wide planted in the soil as if, like Antaeus, he renewed his strength by contact with the earth.

Often sober-looking and grave, he showed flashes of a youthful humor that I found ingratiating. There was a delight in him, as if he could not really believe his good fortune. He was easy to like, and I was secretly pleased that Sophie wanted me to paint him. When he returned to being a plain farmer, and Worthy had taken over as Harvest Lord, he and Sophie could look at the portrait on winter nights and tell their children how it had been back then.

“It looks like a good soil for crops,” I observed.

“Best around.” Cornwall Coombe would see a bountiful harvest this year, he said, speaking with a reverence I had seldom beheld in a man. Corn was easy to grow; all that was needed was rich earth, plenteous rains while the kernels formed in the husks, and the long slow heat of the August nights. He asked if I’d heard the Widow tell about hearing the corn grow.

I laughed and said yes. “One of her fancies, I guess.”

Justin shook his head. “It’s true. You can hear it. And it’s one of the best sounds in the world. Thirteen years ago, we had a Waste, and a man would have given his eyeteeth to hear the corn growing then.”

“A bad time-the Widow told me about it.”

“When you’ve seen one of those, you never forget it. A drought that leaves every stalk and leaf withered and the earth dry as dust. And if corn won’t grow, nothing will. It’s a terrible thing to see, bad enough when it happens to you, but worse when it happens to your neighbors, who maybe don’t have as much put by as you do. They get to depend on a fellow, Fred and Will and the others.” His brow contracted. “And she that brought the drought made them suffer.”

“She?”

“Grace Everdeen. As big a fool as God ever put in Cornwall. She’s the one who brought the last Great Waste.”

“How did Grace die?”

“She killed herself. As she ought to have.”

“How?”

“She threw herself off the Lost Whistle Bridge. Drowned.”

Sophie’s face clouding over the cream pitcher; no wonder the bridge had unhappy associations.

Changing the subject, Justin took pains to lay out for me the economics that welded the village into such a tightly knit community. The individual land titles dated as far back as the 1650s, the tracts having been portioned out by Gwydeon Penrose and the elders in accordance with the size of the family and the number of males available to farm the land. The acreage thus balanced, everyone worked it in communal fashion. Today, as then, when the corn was finally dried on the stalk, it would be harvested by hand, the ears loaded into wagons and taken over to the granary at Ledyardtown, where the wagons would be weighed with their contents, emptied, and weighed again; the farmers were paid for the difference in weight, their profits depending on the amount of land they tilled.

If the corn went to the granary, I asked, was it all husked first at the husking bee? Justin shook his head. “My fields will be the first to be harvested, and the corn from my south field will be the last to be husked. That’s what goes to the Grange for the husking bee.”

When I asked why this was so, he shrugged and said, “It’s always been that way.” He bent and pulled a weed and stuck it in the pocket of his overalls. “It’s part of the rights of the Lord.”

“And when Worthy becomes the Harvest Lord, then do the rights go to him?” Yes, he said. I replied that from my observations the idea seemed to have little appeal for Worthy Pettinger. Justin’s brow contracted again. “He’s got no choice in the matter. He’s been chosen.”

“By Missy.”

“Chosen,” he repeated stolidly. “Worthy’s just got too darn many modern ideas. He doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

“You’ve been lucky.”

“Sure have. I got my farm and I got Sophie and I’ve been Harvest Lord. Maybe that’s not so much to you, but it’s a lot for me.”

I pictured again the first time I had seen him, the unknown giant with the hoe in the tilled field. Now, as then, he seemed the human manifestation of the growing process, the descendant of the ancient yeoman who works his land and lays by his crops, who hopes for the best and will take the worst, whose lot in life, good or bad, comes from the land.

He smiled warmly and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ve got to be getting back to work. Sophie’s mightily appreciative of that drawing. We both thank you.”

I said I was glad it had pleased her, and told him of her plan regarding the portrait. Justin smiled. “Well, now, I don’t know as I’d make much of a subject. You want me to put on a coat and tie and come sit in your studio?” I explained my method of work, that I would begin some sketches when he had the time, and that I would like to pose him somewhere here on the farm. I would paint at my portable easel, and when he wasn’t available I could work at home.

Almost in spite of himself, a light had sprung into his eye. I could see he was both touched by Sophie’s gesture and flattered that I would paint the portrait. He shook my hand warmly, and as I looked at his honest face it seemed I saw his honest heart.

He moved down the drive to the pear tree he had set in the ground. He took the shovel leaning against it, and for a moment his hand grasped the slender trunk. I decided then and there that this was how I would paint the farmer Justin Hooke: beside the newly planted pear tree.

I turned and started along the drive to my car, watching the long rows of drying corn as they passed my line of vision. Then something caught my eye and I stopped. At the head of one of the rows, leaning against the broken face of a rock, I saw a little figure. At first I thought it must be Missy’s doll, or one like it; then I realized it was something else. I picked it up and looked at it. It was about eight inches tall and, though of the doll family, it was entirely different. For while Missy’s gaga was merely a child’s plaything, this clearly was something far more extraordinary. It looked like a kind of totem, a fetish of some sort, a little corn god.

In a cornfield? The idea seemed ridiculous, and I wondered if some superstitious farmer, jealous of Justin, was trying to put a country hex on him. I looked back to the barnyard where the men were still working. No one had seen me stop. Tucking the doll inside my jacket, I hurried on my way.

It had been my intention to go to the covered bridge to see whether my true impressions of it had been reflected in paint, or whether I was doing nothing better than a calendar-type reproduction. Driving out along the Old Sallow Road, however, and passing the nearer edges of Soakes’s Lonesome, I came across the Widow Fortune’s buggy parked on the shoulder of the road. A short distance beyond, I saw her black-clad figure making its way through the grass bordering the woods. I tooted my horn and would have passed, but she waved for me to pull over.

“Hello,” I called, getting out.

“Hello yourself. Faired off nice, didn’t it? How’s your bridge picture?”

“Well, it’s a picture of a bridge. Can’t say as it’s much more.”

“You’re gettin’ awful New England in your twang.”

I crossed the gully to meet her, looking into the splint basket on her arm. “What are you after today?”

“Mushrooms is up.”

“Are they?”

“All over. Rain brings ‘em. Come along, if you like. I’m on a reg’lar expedition.”

I ran back to the car, took my keys from the ignition, and slid the little corn doll into the glove compartment and locked it. I locked the doors, then joined the Widow at the edge of the woods. Her face looked warm and moist, and I detected a note of excitement in her air as, with her usual spry step, she started off among the trees, letting me catch up as I might, she with her head down, so that her keen eye should miss no needed herb or plant.

“Elecampane’s abundant this year.” She bent and broke a sprig from a plant, and held it for me to sniff. “Lovely smell. But we’re not lookin’ for elecampane today.”

“How about toadstools? Can you tell the difference?”

“No difference. Toadstool’s a moniker, nothing more. Find an ugly mushroom, folks think it’s something a toad might sit on. But they’re all mushrooms. Trick is in knowing which from which.” She proceeded along, from time to time using her spectacles like a lorgnette, for a closer study of the terrain.

“What do you do with elecampane?” I asked.

“That’s what Fred Minerva’s takin’.”

“What other ingredients?”

She laughed and gave my shoulder a knock. “That’d be tellin’, wouldn’t it? It’s not sal volatile-you can bet your boots.”

I hadn’t imagined she would give a recipe for medicine any more than she would for hoecake, unless she left one of the ingredients out. She saw a tree around whose base had grown a series of shelf-like formations, pale brown in color, and she hurried to it, knelt, and examined the growths with her hands, nodding, and muttering anxiously to herself. She rummaged in her basket, and when I asked what she was looking for, she “Drat’ted and said she’d forgotten to bring along a knife. I lent her my penknife, and watched as she scraped around the outer edge of several of the growths, catching the parings in her hand. These she slipped into a scrap of tinfoil paper, made a twist, and dropped it in her basket. We proceeded on again, and she stopped here and there, once to scrape some sulfur-colored lichens from the bole of a tree, another time-producing Jack Stump’s hatchet from her basket-to hack up some pale roots she had unearthed under the layer of decayed leaves and humus around a strange-looking shrub. A novice in the mysteries of herb-gathering, I was fascinated by the variety of material that struck her eye. Once, when she was on her hands and knees feeling about under the pine needles, she pulled me down with her and brought my ear close. Hear, she said; listen to them, they’re at work. There were sounds of minute scurryings under the needles, and she pulled them apart to show me the little beetles and worms crawling about, pale, wet, segmented, decomposing nature as fast as they could-pulverizing leaves, grass, roots, bark, branches, cones, everything- forming the new matter that would fertilize the next generation of growth in the woods.

We went on, farther into Soakes’s Lonesome. When I mentioned the Soakeses, and wondered if we might be considered trespassers, the old lady cried “Faugh!”-an expletive plainly denoting her contempt for the savage ‘cross-river’ tribe.

We walked along a path where the leaves had drifted in thick windrows, our feet making shushing sounds among them, while up in the tree branches birds sang. I was unfamiliar with this section of the woods, and I wondered in what direction lay the tall pine, with the blazed path of the grove of white birches. Once I almost started to confide in her the secret of the skeleton in the hollow tree, and of the gray ghost I had seen, but again I feared being laughed at, and most of all by her.

Suddenly, distant shotgun fire reverberated through the trees, a series of muffled detonations. “Devils,” the Widow muttered. “There’s your Soakeses, over t’the river. Killin’. You a hunter? No? Good. Too many hunters.”

Now she uttered a little excited cry and dashed ahead of me. When I caught up with her, she was standing beside a large tree and looking down where, close to the base, grew a ring of mushrooms that had sprung up through the ground covering. She quickly knelt and began breaking the stems at the base and handing them to me. I examined one: though it was handsome, it certainly looked like the most poisonous thing nature could provide. The cap was about four inches across, a brilliant red, with small, warty bumps on it. The surface felt sticky, and bits of pine needles had adhered. The stem was white and pulpy-feeling, and the gills on the underside were a delicate formation of pale white. I had never seen the old woman so excited; her face was flushed from her exertions as she demolished the ring little by little. Then she carefully wrapped each mushroom in a piece of tinfoil. When she had finished, she gave me her hand and I helped her to her feet.

“There,” she exclaimed with pleasure, dusting her dress and handing me the basket to carry. “I knew we’d find some fly today, if we persevered.”

“Fly?”

“Those,” pointing to the mushrooms, “are fly agaric.” They were called “fly,” she explained, because they were once used to kill flies and other insects. If it would kill flies, how about humans? I asked. She laughed.

“I expect it could, you eat enough of them. Or at least they’d make a body mighty sick.”

“What do you use them for?”

“A woman always thinks it takes two to keep a secret, but I’m here to say I think it takes one.” She touched my arm and we proceeded back along the way we had come. At one point, we passed a spot where some more mushrooms grew; she pointed them out but scorned touching them. “Now there’s some little mites that only a fool’d touch.” Small and white, with dome-shaped caps, these were known as the Destroying Angel, and were deserving of their name. As for the red-topped beauties in the basket-those, she hastened to say, properly used could cure chilblains or, as in the case of Ferris Ott’s father, to halt his attacks of St. Vitus’ dance; Farmer Ott had had to miss church four Sundays in a row. “You and Beth are gettin’ to be quite the churchgoers,” she observed as we walked along. I said we were finding it pleasant, that I hadn’t been to church since I was a boy, and as for Beth-

She laughed. “She told me she’s a nonbeliever. Still, nonbelievers can become believers.”

“Old dogs and new tricks?”

“Why not?”

“I think Beth believes only in what she knows for sure to be true.”

The widow had been searching about her as we went along, now stopping to peer intently around a clump of ferns, now upon the ground. “What is truth?” she demanded finally.

“That which exists.”

“Many things exist. Things beyond-”

“The ken of man?”

“And others even within his ken. Depends on how broad a ken a pusson’s got.” She gave the word “ken” an emphasis that caused me to pay closer attention. “Here in this village, in this little place where folks seldom go beyond its boundaries, they tell themselves they understand the world and life. Coming from the city, you perhaps understand more.”

“Possibly.”

“But not all.” Her next question startled me. “You believe in the psychics?”

“Like Missy Penrose?”

“Missy, and other-”

“Phenomena? It’s possible.”

“Phenomena can be realized, too. By those who-seek.” Again the little snick of emphasis. “Take yourself, now. You’re a man of perception. Seein’s not necessarily believin’. There’s many kinds of reality, y’know. Many kinds o’ things.” She seemed to be leading the conversation, as if making some subtle probe of my nature. “It’s a matter of understandin’ things that maybe seem impossible to understand.”

“How?”

“By a pusson openin’ himself up to the possibility.” Again she shot me a look to see how I was absorbing this.

“How would a person do that?”

“There are ways.”

“Would you show a person?”

The familiar twinkle behind the glasses. “What makes you think I could?”

It was my turn to shoot her a look. “I think you could.”

She laughed and gave me a thump on the back. “Flattery’s a poisoned gift, they say.” She brushed some strands of cobweb from her skirts where her scissors usually hung. I pricked up my ears at her next words. “Still,” she said in a barely audible tone, “an ‘experience’ might be arranged.”

“How’s that?”

“I said an ‘experience.’”

“When?” My response was too eager, too forthright. I suddenly realized we were dealing in subtleties. Again she used her glasses lorgnette-style to peruse the ground carefully.

“Who knows?” she said at last. “A pusson mustn’t go too fast. The sphinx in Egypt’s been there a long time but no one’s solved its riddle yet. Not even the great Napoleon. ‘Course, some folks is smarter than others. If they was presented with a sphinx, they might be able to solve the riddle.”

“They?”

“They.”

“Me?”

“Maybe.” She replaced her glasses and her glance was mischievous as she picked up her skirts and went by me. “A man must learn to discover what is possible.”

“Would that be the ‘experience’?”

“You got too many questions.” I could hear the humor in her voice. “Come along.”

14

The next few days brought more intermittent rain followed by a cold snap. We turned the heat on for the first time since our occupancy, and steam clanked through the labyrinthine pipes, rattling the radiators in furious bursts of energy, but producing little heat. The thermostat, of ancient vintage, was found to be defective, and I called a heating crew from over on the turnpike, asking them to replace it with a new one. Meanwhile we used the fireplaces. These proved to be defective as well, for in each room-the living room, the bacchante room, and our bedroom-more smoke seemed to come down the flue than went up.

Clearly what was needed was Jack Stump, whom I remembered hearing brag that he was handy in the matter of chimneys. He was long overdue to have returned, and I biked down the River Road to the bait shack where he lived.

Jack Stump had never claimed the virtues of homemaker, and his poor dwelling appeared to be in the same sorry state as when he had first taken tenancy back in March, after the spring floods. I could see a watermark girdling the battened sides about halfway up, and I wondered why the shack hadn’t been carried away altogether. The lawn was weeds, with cans and other debris scattered everywhere. At one side was a windowless shed where he probably stowed his rig, but the door was padlocked when I investigated. I knocked at the shack door, and got no reply. I knocked again, then called; still no reply.

I would have to tackle the chimneys myself. I turned my bike around and pedaled back up the road, pulling over to the side as a red Volkswagen came toward me from the other direction. I recognized Jim Minerva, who waved as he passed. What was he doing down on the River Road when he should be working at the grocery store? Playing hooky, maybe, and getting in a bit of fishing.

Driving back along Main Street, I saw Tamar Penrose in the doorway of the post office. She was holding a cat in her arms, and she watched me sullenly as she cradled the animal against her shoulders, her red nails running through the fur like so many red beetles.

In its unpredictable, New England way, the weather turned fine again. The following Saturday I engaged Worthy’s assistance and together we went about dealing with the chimneys. We laid old sheets at the bottoms of the fireplaces, covered the mantels, then got up on the roof. Using safety ropes, we fished a heavy chain down the chimney and flailed it about, loosening the soot and unclogging the flues.

The Dodds had returned the night before, and I called down to Maggie, who was planting bulbs on her side of the hedge; after a while she brought Robert out to enjoy the sun in a lawn chair and they talked while she gardened. When Worthy and I came off the roof before lunch, we carried away the sheets and emptied them in the trash, then cleaned up at the kitchen sink. While we handed the bar of Lava soap back and forth, I reminded him of the leaking sink in the studio, which he had neglected to take care of.

We had calf’s liver for lunch, and when we had eaten, Beth drove over to Mrs. Green’s to pick up a quilt. I paid Worthy and sent him along, then walked down the drive to the studio. I closed the door behind me and sat, bemused, on my stool. The thing I was thinking about was in the room, but for the space of a quarter of an hour I did not look at it. Finally I went to one of the racks and took out the sketchbook I had used at the fair. I nipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for: the drawing of Missy Penrose’s doll. I stared at it for some time, then, placing the pad on the drawing board, I drew a shoebox down from the top shelf, where I had hidden it. I removed the cover and placed the doll from Justin’s cornfield beside the sketch and compared the two images.

Both had corncob bodies, both had huge eyes secured in the straw head, straw legs bunched together with raffia ties, and tattered bits of rag that passed for garments. The doll was just a child’s doll, but the other thing-I stared down at the strange, eldritch face, again trying to comprehend its being. It was clearly meant to represent the female figure, for attached to the cob body were large protuberances passing for breasts, and its sex was clearly denned by a deep cleft between the legs.

What was it? Whose hand had fashioned it? Recalling a section in one of my reference books, I found the volume and turned to “Primitive Art,” my eyes scanning the pages: a grotesque figure of a painted clay effigy vessel, possibly representing the goddess Demeter; another, a contemporary doll of the Angolese, representative of the fertility rites practiced by primitive agrarian societies; a giant basalt head found in Mexico, believed to represent Coatlicue, the great Mother Goddess, destroyer of men; an ivory doll carved by an Eskimo, the figure of a shaman or tribal priest; a Pueblo Indian kachina doll with wooden body, dressed in cloth and feathers; a Mayan stone face found in Honduras; a god of the ancient peoples of Oceania; a carved relief of a female, dug up in France, and believed to be the object of worship of the ancient Celts. All, as the accompanying text explained, manifestations in the different cultures of a similar deity, that Earth Mother who was older than Rome or Greece, older than Crete, than Babylon or Egypt; as old as the dawn of time.

I turned back to the drawing board, comparing the images again. It was the eyes, mainly. In the sketch they had a blank, almost innocent gaze, but in the figure they seemed mysterious, even malevolent. All-seeing eyes, all-knowing. Omnipotent. Whose did they remind me of? There was a cruelty in their ominous stare, implacable, remorseless. Suddenly I felt a chill. Had I tampered with something I had no right touching, some witch doll or voodoo object one of the superstitious villagers had stuck in Justin’s field to cast a spell?

I whirled at the sound of footsteps. Worthy Pettinger stood hunched in the doorway, a wrench in his hand. “I forgot to fix the pipe-” He broke off and his face paled as he stared at the thing on the drawing board. “Where did you get it?”

“I found it.” He stepped back as though struck. “Can you tell me what it is?”

“Where did you find it?”

“In a field.”

“Where?”

“At Justin Hooke’s.” The wrench clattered to the floor; I picked it up. “Have you ever seen one before?”

“No. I never.” A whisper as he backed away to the door. “You got to get rid of it.”

“What is it?”

“I-don’t know. Does anyone know you took it?”

“No. I don’t think so.” I lifted it, shook it, heard a swift intake of breath from Worthy. I put it in the box and set the lid on. “I’ll burn it.”

“No! You can’t burn the corn-it’s got to go back into the ground. Bury it.” Snatching up the box, he ran from the studio. When I stepped out, I saw him taking a spade and hurrying behind the garage, the box under his arm.

He dug the hole under a clump of bushes close to the hedge separating our property from the Dodds’; he shoveled the box deep into the soft ground, covered it, and jumped on the earth with his feet. Then he scattered leaves and twigs over the spot. When he finished, he leaned on the spade handle, sweating and wiping his mouth, his eyes riveted to the newly covered hole.

I waited another moment, then spoke. “Worthy, tell me what it is.”

He took a breath and seemed to recover himself. “I don’t know,” he said with an offhand shrug. “Just some crazy thing.” He sounded sheepish. “I guess I got carried away. Well, long as it’s there I suppose we can leave it. Nobody wants a crazy-looking thing like that anyways.” Still he could not disguise the urgency in his voice.

I looked at him coolly. “Missy Penrose might.”

“Huh?” He looked up sharply.

“She has one like it. A corn doll. You’ve seen it, surely.”

He shrugged again. “Oh, sure, that. Lots of the kids do. ‘Gagas,’ they’re called. Just poppets.”

“You don’t care for Missy much.”

“Sure, she’s O.K.”

“Can she prophesy?”

A dark look had come over the boy’s face, the blood rose to his cheeks. He fell silent, absently chopping with the tip of his spade along the edge of the flower bed closest to the hedge. His shoulders hunched, his mouth assumed a grim line.

“Worthy, I’m asking you something.” Still no reply. “You don’t want to be in the play, do you?” He waited; silence. “Do you?” I stepped to the boy and spun him around. “Answer me, damn it.”

“No, I don’t!” He spat the words hotly. “It doesn’t matter anyway-I won’t be here!”

“Why not?”

He yanked his shoulder from under my hand and his dark eyes flashed angrily. “Because I’m leaving. I hate this town, and I hate the people in it. They’re fools, all of them.”

“Why?”

“Because they think that what they think is the only way to think. They think if you plow a field you should use a mule, not a tractor. Mules are the old way, and wooden rakes are the old way, and hoes are the old way, and that’s all you hear around here-the old ways. I don’t want to be a corn farmer.”

“Corn seems inevitable in this place.”

“Not for me. Nothing to do but plant corn, nothing to talk about but harvesting corn. And their Spring Festival and their Midsummer’s Eve and their husking bee.” His voice rose in pitch, then broke, and when he spoke again it was with a softer tone.

“Honest, Mr. Constantine, I got to get out of here. I’ve got to get away.”

“One-horse town?”

A trace of a smile. “Sort of. You know. A fellow gets feeling cooped up in a place like this. I never been anywhere farther than Danforth.”

“Will you go there-to your friends?”

“That’d be the first place they’d look.”

“Who?”

“All of them. I’m thinking of joining the navy.”

“And see the world? Maybe that’s a good idea.”

“I been savin’ my money. I got some put by, enough to tide me over. There’s a fellow I know runs a pool parlor and beer bar in Hartford. I can go stay with him until I decide what to do.”

“How old are you, son?”

“Sixteen.”

“The navy won’t take you without your parents’ consent, you know. Not till you’re seventeen.”

“I know. They’ll never give it, anyway, but I’ll be seventeen soon.” He lifted the shovel and stepped from the hedge, moving past me.

I stopped him. “You’re right. You ought to go if it’s what you want to do. It’s your life, no one else’s, and you can’t let other people tell you what you should do. We’ll miss you.” I took out my wallet, extracted some bills, and held them out. Worthy shook his head.

“Go on, son, take it.”

“You already paid me.”

“This is just to help you along till you get things figured out.” I pressed the money into his hand.

“O.K., but only till I can repay you.” He folded the bills until they were a small square and tucked them in his watch pocket. “Thanks, Mr. Constantine. I’m sorry to be leaving you. You’ve been kind to me. Will you tell Kate goodbye?” He looked back at the buried box. “And look-”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I was sure he was going to say more, but had thought better of it. “Will you write me and let me know what you decide?”

“Sure. Would you want my tractor?”

“That’s right-we were going to plow with it next spring. How much are you asking?”

“No-you can have it. It’s a present.”

I said I couldn’t accept it, but if he thought I could manage to keep it running, I’d like to buy it; where could I send a check?

He thought a moment, then said, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll write to you, and put ‘Jonn Smith’ on the envelope. That way you’ll know it’s from me.” Again he looked back at the covered hole. “Don’t tell anybody,” he whispered. I took the shovel and we shook hands.

“Tell your wife goodbye, too,” he said, and went up the drive. One thing was clear: he was lying. Something had frightened him.

I looked down at the spot where he had buried the box; then, taking the shovel in my hands, I began digging.

When I had hung the shovel in the garage and come out, the shoebox under my arm, I heard Robert’s hallo from the other side of the hedge.

“That you, Ned? Come and sit.”

Turning the corner of the hedge, I found the blind man in his lawn chair, with his usual stoical attitude, as though he had learned long ago never to expect anything but what life chose to bring him. “Well, m’boy, Margaret tells me you’ve been up on the roof all morning. Be careful-those old shingles can be treacherous.”

I pulled up another chair, explaining that all necessary precautions had been taken, and that Worthy Pettinger had done most of the dangerous work anyway.

“Handy fellow, Worthy,” Robert said ruminatively. “Good-looking boy, too, they tell me. Got the old Cornish blood in him.”

“I thought the Cornish were fair. He looks more like an Indian.”

“In England it’s generally held that the so-called ‘black Irish’ were sired by those Spaniards who made it to shore when the Armada was sunk, but anyone who knows their apples will tell you it’s not the Spanish who blackened the Cornish hair, but men from a civilization far older than that. I’m speaking of the sailors from Knossos, in Crete, long before Caesar’s legions were even settling in England.”

“And Missy,” I asked pointedly. “Is she of the Cornish strain, too?”

“Her mother is, that we know. As to the father-that would be anybody’s guess.”

“Is it true she can prophesy?”

Before Robert could reply, Maggie appeared with a carriage robe which she tucked around his knees, laughing at his protests at being coddled. “Just pretend you’re on shipboard, darling.”

“What time do we get to Le Havre?” He smoothed the cover over his knees while Maggie knelt close by with her gardening things. “What have you fellows been talking about?” she asked, digging in some large new bulbs.

“Ned was asking about Missy’s predictions.”

Maggie laughed again. “Ned, you’ve got to get used to the country notions around here.”

“I don’t think you can toss them off as notions,” Robert argued. “Certainly there are people who appear to be endowed with special powers. Cassandra foretold the downfall of Troy. Montezuma’s priests were able to predict ahead of time the coming of the white man to the New World. Modern psychical research recognizes precognition as possible. People get portents of disaster all the time, and they’re often confirmed.”

“Maybe Missy just makes lucky guesses,” I put in.

“Maybe. But because of her freckles the villagers believe she had communication with the god. Not our Christian God, mind you, but the god that was worshiped in the olden times, as the Widow calls them. In those days, they believed men had the power of divination which stemmed from their knowledge of the stars.”

“And Missy’s stars are written on her face.”

Maggie placed a bulb in the hole and covered it over. “You see, Ned-country notions.”

“What you have to remember,” Robert continued, “is that human nature doesn’t change much. You can’t negate the ingrained imagination of a whole culture. When they came from Cornwall to the New World, the original settlers were a deeply religious sect. What did they find when they got here? Cold, illness, the constant fear of attack; they were foodless and homeless. They were forced to adapt to circumstances, to learn new ways in order to survive. But in learning the new they refused to give up the old, a faith based on the moon and the stars and the tides, and on ancient deities they could turn to for succor in this time of stress. During the first year the village was settled, there was a good harvest, which the Indians had shown them how to grow, and they had food.”

But then, he went on, had come what was still remembered as the Great Waste, the famine where the corn shriveled up and died, and the Cornish settlers felt the cold hand of fear at their throats, and they raised themselves up and prayed for help, not in church but in the fields, inviting the blessings of the old gods, those who had come with the dark-haired Cretan sailors. And the gods answered them, for the land was blessed with crops in the fields and fruit in the orchards.

“But it’s all vestigial,” Maggie hastened to point out. “Like the Spring Festival and the bonfire.”

“Country notions, yes,” Robert replied. “You’ll find evidence, though, that when the Christian priests tore down the pagan temples, the people made them leave the trees that grew around the temples. And, more importantly, the priests couldn’t destroy the thinking that impelled the building of the temples in the first place.”

“What would Mr. Buxley do if he found something like this in Justin Hooke’s corn patch?” I took the lid from the shoebox and brought out the doll.

Maggie, about to set in another bulb, laid it down with her trowel. “What on earth-?” She reached and took the doll from me. “What a strange-looking thing.” She turned it over in her hands, examining it. Then she placed it in Robert’s hands and let him feel it, describing its form to him in all its details. When Robert had done, she stood it up on the ground among her iris cuttings and bulbs and pronounced it a most unhandsome thing.

“It’s really quite awful-looking, Robert.”

“Is it?”

“What do you suppose it means?” I ventured. “Do they believe in hex around here?”

“Hex is Pennsylvania Dutch, isn’t it?” Maggie said. “I never heard of any hex in Cornwall, did you, Robert?”

“No. I don’t believe so.”

“Where did you find it, Ned?”

“In Justin’s cornfield.”

I watched Robert closely, seeking some visible expression behind his dark glasses. It was impossible to see beyond them. He drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the arms of his chair. From the corner of my eye I saw Maggie collecting her gardening things, dropping the iris cuttings and bulbs into her basket. She rose, dusting her knees. “I’m going to leave you men to sort it all out. It’s too much for me.”

“What would Mr. Buxley do?” I asked Robert again when she had taken her basket and gone.

He shrugged. “I suppose he’d look the other way, just as the Catholic Church does. The church and the law have learned it’s a lost cause trying to censure such beliefs. How can you hope to fight them, when it’s proved that the old Cornishmen arrived here with the same gods the Indians already had?”

“But-vestigial, you say?”

“Margaret’s word, but I suppose it suffices. All these things are the traces of the older culture. Who knows why Fred Minerva will let his barn burn before he’ll put up lightning rods? Or why the Widow can cure things the doctor can’t? Or how Missy can tell the future?

“Justin traces his lineage back in an unbroken line to the earliest families in Cornwall. Now, those forebears of his were — as Cornishmen are-deeply religious. They believed in one way for countless years, and then the priests came and renamed all the streams and wells and glens, and tore down the temples and built churches and gave them Christ on a cross. They accepted all this for more than a thousand years. But all the time, they were feeling some nameless longing inside. What do they do? They hark back to the olden times, where they find a source of comfort that even they can’t comprehend, a fever that cools the fever, a mask that hides the mask.

“Superstitious? Oh, yes, Justin’s superstitious. It’s in his blood, his bones, his very nature. In his father’s, and in his grandfather’s. Because he believes that come hell or high water, bad crops or plague, what’s going to save him is that inner voice that he listens to. His or Missy Penrose’s, no matter which. That’s why they still have fires and dancing on the Common.” He put his hands on the arm of his chair to lift himself. “No, no, I can do it. Come in and have a drink? No? Come over again, it’s always good to have company.”

He went across the lawn as if he had eyes to tell him the way, and when he got to the back door Maggie came and opened it, holding it for him while he entered. “Thank you, Margaret,” he said, going in. I waved, but she appeared not to have seen me, and I turned to go home.

15

When I reached the corner of the hedge, I heard the sound of hoofbeats along the road, and saw Kate coming down the lane astride Tremmy. She sat the horse well for the length of time she had been riding, though it briefly occurred to me that she was coming at too fast a pace. When she reined up beside me, her face was flushed and excited with the elation of being on horseback.

Remembering the former owner’s warning, I told her to be careful not to give the animal so much head. She leaned from the saddle and smoothed the mane over the ridge of the chestnut neck muscles. “She’s just high-spirited, Daddy. Watch!”

She flicked the reins, spun the mare, and rode her in circles around me as I stood in the middle of the road.

“Fine, sweetheart. But I think Tremmy’s had enough for one day, and so have you. Cool her off now, and give her her dinner. Don’t forget to rub her down,” I called as I went in the back door.

In the bacchante room, I discovered ladies come to call.

“Behold your seraglio,” said the Widow Fortune, looking up from her sewing. Her horse, she said, had a stony hock today, so she had come shanks’ mare with Mrs. Zalmon and Mrs. Green to bring us a gift, a little wooden keg of honey mead. She pointed to the dusty vessel on the piecrust table, saying she had not wiped it off, since she wanted me to see how old it was. I made myself a Scotch-and-soda and sat in my club chair. Kate came in with a can of polish and began using it on her boots. “Kate,” the Widow said, “You sit that horse like a reg’lar hussar.”

“I want a new saddle for her, only I’ll have to wait until next year.”

“How’s that?”

“Haven’t the money. I have to save out of my allowance.”

“Chickens,” the Widow announced. “You ought to go into business and raise chickens.” She gave me a look. “You put up some wire and stakes and build the child a chicken run. When the chickens get tired of laying, you can always eat ‘em. Beth, you promised me that recipe for chicken and crabmeat.”

“I’ll copy it out before you go.”

“What’s for dinner?” Kate asked.

“Steaks and salad.”

Kate made a face. “I’d rather have chili.”

“Chili?” the Widow said.

Beth laughed. “Kate’s favorite thing in the world is Pepe Gonzalez’s chili.”

“You come to me for dinner one night, Kate, and let me fix you a nice clam chowder, and you’re bound to change your mind.”

“Clams is all spoiled over to Boston,” Mrs. Green said.

“No.” The Widow was shocked.

Mrs. Zalmon said, “There’s poison in the water makes ‘em go bad. People are dyin’ of it.”

The Widow shook her head. “Not content to ruin the land, now they must poison the sea. Think of that. No clams.”

“And oysters,” Mrs. Green put in. “Imagine. Today folks eat oysters whether the month’s got an ‘R’ or not. Things certainly have changed since I was a girl!”

“Cozy room, Ned,” the Widow observed, looking around. “Be nice for winter evenin’s.”

Mrs. Green made a mock shiver. “Ooh-winter, and so soon.”

“Aye, soon. People claim a New England winter’s hard, and I s’pose it is for them what’s soft. But I like to feel all tucked in by a blanket of snow come Thanksgivin’. And they say when winter comes, spring can’t be far behind. The shadblow will pop before you know it, and it’ll be Plantin’ Day again. There’ll be Spring Festival, and dancin’ on the green.”

“The maypoles,” Mrs. Green said.

“Maybe Worthy’ll be takin’ Kate to the maypoles.” The Widow gave her a bright look.

“Kate, darling,” Beth suggested, “why don’t you clean your boots in the kitchen?” Kate took her boots and polish away, mourning Pepe Gonzalez’s chili.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew down the chimney, scattering the ashes from the fire I had made to test the cleaned-out flue.

“Oh, dear…” Mrs. Green looked doubtfully at Mrs. Zalmon. The Widow glanced up behind her spectacles, then borrowed Beth’s shears to snip a thread.

“An omen, for sure,” Mrs. Zalmon said in a hushed tone.

Beth used the fireplace brush to tidy up the hearth. “Well, we can’t say the chimney isn’t drawing.”

I said I hoped so; Worthy and I had worked like dogs.

“I told you he was a good worker,” the Widow said with some satisfaction.

“What do you suppose can be the matter with Worthy?” Beth said. “I never saw such a change in a boy.”

Mrs. Zalmon replied, “Some young people want too much from life. More than they’re meant to have. Worthy don’t know how lucky a boy he is. To have been chosen the Young Lord is an honor most boys wouldn’t sneeze at. Look at Justin. See at the fine farm he’s made, the finest in the Coombe. Worthy could do a lot for his family by settin’ his mind in the village ways and not wantin’ to be a revolutionary. Ought to thank the Lord he’s been chosen, Worthy ought.”

“How was the Harvest Lord chosen before Missy’s time?” I asked.

Mrs. Zalmon explained. “It was done by vote of the ladies. Everyone met in the church the afternoon of Agnes Fair and dropped a ballot in the collection box.” Then, Mrs. Green continued, the most votes won. But when Missy came along and it was discovered she had the power, it was decided this year to give up the voting and let her make the choice.

“Still and all,” Mrs. Zalmon put in, “that’s not to say Missy done the best, choosin’ Worthy.”

“What will happen if he isn’t in the play?” I asked.

“Not in the play?” The Widow gave a sharp look. “He’ll be in the play, will he, nill he. People expect it of him.”

“People don’t always do what people expect of them,” I ventured. “Maybe he’s got other plans.”

Mrs. Green sniffed. “He can’t have other plans. Boys must do their duty, same as men. That’s the way it’s always been. Isn’t that so?”

“Maybe.” The Widow was thoughtful. “Clem always thought so. But then he was a most unusual man.”

“Clemmon’s gone to glory,” Mrs. Zalmon said. The Widow nodded, and bit the end of her thread off.

“Aye, gone to glory,” she repeated softly. “Where, God willin’, I’ll follow afore long.”

“Afore long? Never think it, Widow!” exclaimed Mrs. Green.

“One day soon I’ll be gone.” She sighed. “Then who’ll there be to pass it all on? Who’ll there be to tell the young? Young folks is so diff’rent today than when we was girls. Still, there’s Tamar-”

“Pshaw, Tamar.” Mrs. Zalmon was indignant. “Tamar take your place?”

“Tamar’s hoydenish, no doubt,” the old lady said mildly, “but she’s got character and strength. She’s of the earth, Tamar is. Maybe she’s not so spiritual as we might hope for, but she’s apt. If a pusson could talk to her-bring her ‘round, so to speak-”

“She’d be a sight better than the bad one,” Mrs. Green agreed.

“Who was Grace Everdeen?” I suddenly asked.

The Widow looked up blankly. “Who was Grace Everdeen?” she repeated, looking not at me but at some invisible point between us. She thought for several moments. “Why, Grace Everdeen was old Bess Everdeen’s girl. Gracie Everdeen.” She repeated the name slowly, as though she had neither spoken nor heard it in a long time. Mrs. Zalmon frowned behind her glasses. I knew I hadn’t chosen a pleasant topic, but still I pursued it.

“But who was she? Why did she run away?”

“She was a wicked girl,” Mrs. Zalmon said firmly.

“The local Jezebel?” I remembered the comments after Mr. Buxley’s Sunday sermon about the jade of Samaria.

“In the Biblical sense.” Mrs. Zalmon’s needle paused in the air. “Grace was worse than any Jezebel. You could see the evil workin’ in her. Look how she changed. Took all those foolish notions, carried on as she did, shimmyin’ up the flagpole.”

“And if that wa’n’t bad enough,” Mrs. Green put in.

“Ayuh. Rasslin’ Roger to the ground at Agnes Fair.”

“In front of the whole village, mind you,” Mrs. Green said indignantly. “Shamin’ the Harvest Lord. Oh, she’d changed all right.”

“I could see it in her face. I could see the badness eatin’ at her. I knew she was lost long before the rest did. I saw her face all pinchin’ up, saw her eyes changin’. Look what come about the night of Harvest Home.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Mrs. Zee…” the Widow cautioned.

“She was a disruptive influence. At her worst she come, and-”

“Goodnight nurse, Mrs. Zee…!”

“Was a disruptive influence!”

From the village we heard the sound of bells. All talk and activity among the women stopped suddenly. Mrs. Green looked at the Tiffany clock on the shelf. “That’s not the six o’clock ringin’-”

The Widow laid aside her quilting. “It’s Mrs. Mayberry, passed over.”

Mrs. Zalmon glanced nervously at the fireplace. “Wind in the chimney. I knew it was an omen.”

The Widow removed her spectacles and pinched the bridge of her nose to ease it. “Aye. She’s passed, bless her heart. I done all I could, and Jim Buxley come to be there at the last. We must say a prayer tonight for her repose.”

Shaking their heads over the departed Mrs. Mayberry, the two other ladies said they’d better be going along. The Widow Fortune lingered for another cup of tea, and while Beth went to do something in the kitchen I took a sketch pad from my case and settled back in the club chair. On the small piecrust table beside it I kept a number of my bamboo pens, one of which I took out and sharpened with my penknife. Uncapping a bottle of ink, I began sketching the old lady as she bent over her quilting. From the unconscious pursings of her mouth and the slight lift of her brows, I could tell she knew what I was doing.

“What sort o’ pen is that?” she asked after I had been working for some moments. I held it up for her, showing her the hollow bamboo tube. “The Japanese use them,” I explained.

“Wily folk, the Japanese.” She glanced at my drawing hand. “How’s your wart?”

“About gone.” I produced the little red bag from inside my shirt and dangled it. “Wily folk, the New Englanders.”

“Here, put that away. Don’t go showin’ it to the neighbors.”

I dropped the bag back inside my shirt and we continued working, she on her sofa, I in my chair. When I had finished the sketch, the Widow asked to see it, and I held it up for her.

“Sakes,” she said, taking it and looking at it thoughtfully. “It’s to the life. The old lady and her sewin’.”

I tore off the page, rolled it up, and presented it to her. She accepted it with a nod and tucked it in her piece-bag. She took the bamboo pen from me and held it to the light, sighting through the hollow tube, then pressing the tip against her palm, as though in wonderment that a drawing could come from such an instrument. She patted my hand. “It’s the hand, of course, not the pen. It’s a tough row to hoe, art-en’t that so?”

“Art’s hard, they say.”

She lightly touched her fingers to my chest. “Art’s power, and it comes from there. In the heart.”

“Can I see you home?”

“No need. No tramp’s going to snatch an old lady. Not this old lady, anyways.” She called goodbye to Beth, then shouted up the stairs to Kate, who came to the top step and waved. While the Widow gathered up the rest of her things, I stifled a yawn. “Too much art. I’ve got to get to bed early.”

She had gone back in the bacchante room for her piece-bag, and as she returned, she paused, her hand resting briefly on the little wooden cask. Her expression was enigmatic as she crossed the hall, and I opened the front door for her. “But not too early to bed,” she said. She went down the steps and turned again, her glasses twinkling. She bobbed her head once, then went down the walk and turned up the lane.

I made a fire in the barbecue while Kate helped Beth carry out the dinner things. We were to dine on the terrace, on the wrought-iron glass-topped table that Beth was particularly fond of. We sat on the iron chairs with the white duck cushions, and there was the smell of autumn leaves in the air. While the steaks broiled we had the salad, and as Kate prattled on about her ambition to raise chickens I looked at Beth over the ironstone tureen. She wore her hair, as usual, in one long sweep, and she’d put on a touch of lipstick. I don’t know if it was merely the long late light, but she looked particularly beautiful. She had on blue jeans and a simple oxford button-down shirt, a marvelous shade of saffron, the color that monks wear in Tibet. I suddenly realized I had begun seeing her in a new light, that in some way she was undergoing subtle changes. She was still the chameleon, taking on the hues and attitudes of those around her, but a different quality had crept into her character, one of purpose and strong-mindedness. She seemed a more distinct personality, as if she were discovering things about herself. She seemed less my wife and more a woman in her own right, more self-reliant and independent. I felt I was looking at her in the round, so to speak, as one views a statue, from all sides, not merely a bas-relief with the figure partially imprisoned in the stone.

“Worthy left the lawnmower out again,” she said. I mentioned nothing of the earlier scene with the boy, and kept my counsel regarding his proposed departure from Cornwall Coombe.

“Oh, nuts,” she said, “I forgot to give the Widow that recipe.” While Kate carried away the tureen and brought out the baked potatoes and succotash, I took the steaks from the fire and forked them onto the platter. “Wouldn’t you know we’d be having steaks,” Beth said. “I’ve only got three; otherwise I could have invited her to stay for dinner.”

“The Widow?”

“Mm.”

As we ate, the sun slowly receded, and the golden light turned purple, then blue, then gradually black. Stars appeared like tiny lights being flicked on. A 747 went over noiselessly, its wings catching the last of the sun, glittering metallically. I lighted the candle in the hurricane lamp. A ragged moon had come up from the east, lopsided and bulbous, spreading a luminous silvery film over the tops of the waving cornfields beyond the meadow.

Kate had draped her linen napkin over her head, and suddenly she leaped up, pushing her chair back and doing a madly antic dance out onto the lawn and back.

“Moon madness! I’m a victim of moon madness!” she cried, popping behind the trunk of the beech tree, then out again. “Boo! I’m the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome.” Beth got her to quiet down, and she came back and sat again, still playing with her napkin.

“I saw him,” I said after a moment’s consideration.

“Who?”

“The ghost.”

“Aw, Daddy, come on.”

“It’s true, sweetheart.”

“Ned.”

“Well, I did. Believe it or not.”

“You saw the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome?”

I nodded, sliding my plate away and leaning back in my chair. The time seemed so right for it, the ill-shapen moon, the quietude-a good night for a ghost story. I recited the details of my encounter with the gray figure on the embankment, building it up in pitch and fervor, making it all misterioso-the strangely twirling figure, the flapping garments, the red, grinning mouth. I made no mention of the bones in the hollow tree, thinking that that part was too real and grisly for even a ghost-story session. Kate was enthralled; her father, who spoke only Truth, had actually seen a ghost.

After I finished my strange recital, she and Beth cleared the things from the table, leaving the hurricane lamp, and I moved into one of the larger, more comfortable terrace chairs. I could hear their voices inside, talking as they rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher. The refrigerator door opened and closed several times; then Beth asked Kate to copy out the chicken-and-crab recipe and take it over to the Widow’s. Maggie called through the sun-porch window beyond the hedge and she and Beth exchanged a few words. Presently I heard the Invisible Voice relating more Dickensian adventures. The dishwasher went on, and the garbage disposal, distinct but muted. When Beth came out with the coffee things on a tray, I went in and brought out the little cask from the table and two glasses from the cupboard. The cask was a beautifully made thing, carefully coopered, and bound with iron hoops at either end; a small wooden peg served as a stopper. I broached it tentatively, then drew it out. Tipping the opening to a glass, I poured out some of the liquid, moving the glass so the sides became coated. It was extremely viscid, with a soft yellow color. I sniffed; it had a pleasant aroma, rather like oranges or some other citrus fruit. The taste was sweetish, but with the tang of a cordial. I filled the other glass half full, handed it to Beth, then finished filling my own. She tried some with the tip of her tongue and pronounced it good, and we alternated sips of it with the coffee.

“What’s Robert reading these days?” she asked.

“I think it’s A Tale of Two Cities. I keep hearing ‘Carton,’ and ‘guillotine.’”

We finished our coffee, then continued sipping the Widow’s mead and enjoying the evening. The yellow bird in the locust tree at the front of the house made muted chirruping sounds, and I thought with what constancy it clung to its nest. Inside the kitchen, the dishwasher clicked, signaling the end of its various phases of mechanical ablutions. From all directions came night sounds, those serene and tranquil noises that have a lulling and most satisfactory effect on the senses. As we sat drinking and talking quietly, a breeze sprang up, carrying the gray barbecue smoke off across the lawn, rustling the leaves of the beech tree. The leaves had continued to fall in profusion, and even as I watched, here and there a current of air dislodged them from the branches and wafted them away.

“Have to rake tomorrow.”

“Mm. Worthy can do it, can’t he?”

I didn’t say anything. Beth pointed up at the sky. “Look- a shooting star.” I caught the faint silver parabola as it swished a small arc through the sky. It seemed vaguely unreal, impossible for something to travel so far, so quickly.

“Make a wish,” Beth said.

“I did.” I watched her light a cigarette. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“If I tell, it won’t come true.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “It couldn’t anyway. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is.”

“I wished Mother were here.”

“Your mother?”

“I wished she could have seen us. Seen Kate. Seen our house. All of it.” She was sitting only a short distance away; I put out my hand for hers, and she took it and bridged the gap. I felt the reassuring pressure of her fingers on the back of my hand.

“What did you wish?” she said.

“I wished for a straight nose.”

“I love your nose.”

Next door, the arm was lifted from the record, and the Invisible Voice fell silent. I waited for the sound of the window being closed, but it must have remained open, for I did not hear it. The sky was ablaze with stars, and as I gazed up at them they seemed unnaturally bright, as though on this night they had somehow come closer to the earth. I picked out the constellations I recognized, the Big and Little Dippers, and the North Star, and, low over the cornfield, Mars glowing red and war-like. I wondered where Orion might be, with Betelgeuse and Rigel; then I thought of the prophetic child, the freckles across the bridge of her nose, the red pointing finger.

I lifted the cask again and poured from it into the glasses, first Beth’s, then mine. I was experiencing a marvelous feeling of relaxation and contentment, and I was fully conscious of the night, of our being together, of this corner of our small domain. I did not speak, but continued enjoying what I sensed was some fleeting moment of comprehension. I felt supersentient-and supersensual. I felt I had never loved Beth more than I did at this moment, had never felt so close, so near to her, not merely touching her hand, but completely and utterly joined to her. How extraordinary she was, my wife. How extraordinary her being. I had a supremely clear sense of who I was, who she was, who we were together. We continued sitting in silence, and I was noticing how the bark of the beech tree seemed to stand out with remarkable clarity when I heard the sound of music. I thought immediately that Robert had put another record on, and was about to make some remark about his selection of what sounded to me like a flute solo, when I realized the sound was coming in the other direction, from the cornfield below the meadow. It rose on the breeze above the sounds of the crickets and peepers, a light roulade of notes, silvery and melodious, faint at first, then taking on a definite form and melody. There was magic in the sound, a kind of mysterious, siren strain gratifying to the ear, alluring and enticing with the plaintive quality of the shepherds’ pipes we had heard in the hills of Greece.

I glanced at Beth; she sat with her eyes closed, enjoying but not questioning it. There was something absolutely and completely pagan about the proliferation of notes, not wild, but primitive. It was sinuous and serpentine, winding itself through the air and breeze, seductively mixing with the sough of the leaves and the grass, the rustle of corn leaves. It was strange. It was magical. It was, I suddenly realized, an experience-the kind of experience, perhaps, that the Widow had hinted at.

Sounds were added. I could detect a second flute, coming from another part of the field. There was the faint tympanic flutter of a tambourine with its fluted disks, and a delicate bell-like chime that made me think of the finger bells of Balinese dancers. A delightful, musical tinkle, whose charm rose in support of the winding flute. We were hearing the pipes of Pan, and at any moment across our lawn would troop horned and goat-legged creatures in the moonlight, satyrs at a wine festival. I tried to comprehend what was happening. This was no impromptu village concert, but a testament of some kind. Then I thought of the honey drink, the cask of mead. It was drugged. Sitting on my terrace, my wife beside me, I felt as if I were being transported, and if this was so, I was utterly willing for it to happen. If it was an experience, I willingly gave myself up to it, tried to open myself to it, as the old lady had suggested; tried to become part of it.

Then, as mysteriously, as magically as it had begun, it ended. The tremolo of the flutes intoned a last strain, then died; there was a brief tintinnabular clink of the tambourine, and a final sound, one I did not recognize, as if some sort of instrument of bones were being used, a tiny subsequence of clicking noises; then all became still again. I breathed deeply, and very softly, not to upset the delicate equilibrium that had balanced within me. I stole a look at Beth. At some time during the playing, our hands had parted, and hers had gone to her breast where it lay, pale and immobile, the fingers curled at the base of her throat. I waited for some movement, some kind of recognition, but she remained immobile, eyes closed, the trace of a smile on her lips, child-like. Was she asleep? Had she heard? Or had I imagined it? I looked up at her as she rose.

“Did-”

Leaning, she laid her fingertips across my lips. I glimpsed her eyes bright in the moonlight before the sweep of her hair fell across them; I knew the answer. I had not imagined it. I stood, moving close and putting my arms around her. She was still holding her glass, and she lifted it and drained off the contents. I watched the slender column of pale throat as the liquid went down, and I could taste the liquor on her lips as I kissed them. Never had she felt more desirable, never had I wanted her more. Yet, and I realized this fully, it was not merely desire, the loin lust we often joked about, but a profound, deep-seated craving to continue the experience on another, on a physical level.

“Let’s go to bed,” I whispered hoarsely. She made a little acquiescent sound in my ear, then stepped away from me, pressing me back in the chair.

“No?” I asked.

“Yes. In a little while. Come to me. I want to see to Kate, and then-”

“Mn?”

“I want to-be ready.” I saw the line of dark lashes as she dropped them. Getting ready was one of the little bits of modesty about her. She went away softly, as though not to break the spell. I picked up my glass again, and drank. I knew now why the cask had been brought, and why the Widow had cautioned not too early for bed. I knew tonight was meant to have a special significance, to evoke a particular awareness in Beth and myself, both separately and jointly.

And it was not over; I was certain there was to be more to the ‘experience.’

The night seemed to expand around me, to encompass and envelop me. The deeper colors of the chrysanthemums grew richer, more vibrant in the moonlight, like the colors in old tapestries. The coppery sheen of the beech leaves became brighter, hammered from precious metals. The sky pulsed and throbbed, evoking a low, touchable canopy, bejeweled, lighted by a globe I could at will reach up and extinguish. I was feeling a rush of intensity I did not understand, but did not care to; to have it was enough. I was aware; I was at one with my surroundings, with sky and earth and light and sound, with trees, flowers, corn, with all of nature.

Then it began, the rest of it.

I saw a figure. I did not move even a fraction as it appeared. I was right; the music had not been the end of it. It was a male figure, and I supposed it had come out of the cornfield, for it waited just at the edge, in a dark strip of soil between the meadow and the beginning of the corn. It stood enormously erect, wearing some kind of garments, though I could not perceive what they might be. I say the figure was enormous, for so it seemed, larger than any human I had ever seen. It took first one step, then another, and came into the full light of the moon.

It might have been a spirit of vegetation-I remember that the idiot trademark of the Jolly Green Giant immediately crossed my mind. Yet there was nothing humorous about it. It was deadly serious, earnest, real. In all its vividness and aliveness, it stood there, the embodiment of vigor and of growing; not demoniacal, but a benign spirit. Now I saw that the arms and legs were sheathed in tied-on bunches of straw, while the torso and lower quarters were girdled in corn leaves. A tight-fitting helmet-shaped cap of leaves covered the head, and the face itself was hidden behind a large straw mask. The expression formed by the angled eye slits, and that of the mouth, was again one of benevolence, the slightly vacant yet obtrusively concentrated expression of ancient Greek sculpture, a look at once bland yet enigmatic: the unknowable. The figure took the classic stance of contrapposto, the forward leg engaged, shoulders and hips in opposition. Thus it stood, nothing more-for the moment.

It was the figure from the corn quilt, of course. The Harvest Lord; but not a representation or facsimile. He brought his arms up very slowly, a gesture I found both equivocal and absolute: a wide, encompassing movement, as though within the curve of his arms lay revelation. With arms outstretched, he bowed, acknowledging me-a somewhat theatrical bow, I thought. I told myself it must be Justin Hooke, yet I was not sure. I looked for a glimpse of golden hair at the back of the neck, but could see none. He straightened again, and lowered one arm. With the other hand he made dumb gestures, pantomiming a flow of words from behind the mask. Then he turned slightly and another gesture indicated the raising of a curtain or drapery, behind which lay the cornfield, which he now indicated in a single wide sweeping arc. Then the arm came down, and he turned to his right.

My attention was drawn to where he looked, and I now saw another figure some distance away along the edge of the field. I had not seen this one appear, either; it was simply there. A female figure, hidden from top to toe under some sort of luminous veil. She remained immobile under the silvery shroud, facing me, then turned toward the male figure. I waited, wondering if they would approach each other simultaneously or if one would go to the other. Then I saw it was the woman who waited, the man who went, advancing to her slowly, ceremoniously, and simply. When he had got to within three or four feet of her, he lay down, couching himself in the short grass, one knee up, resting on one locked arm. For a moment neither moved; then the woman’s pale draperies parted and an arm appeared. In a slow gesture it revealed itself, the hand supple, graceful, the ringers relaxed, slightly bent, the forefinger extended. She leaned her shoulders slightly forward, and now the man raised his free arm and, with his pointing finger, awaited her touch. The space between the two fingers grew smaller, and as they closed I saw a quick flash, a single white sputter of light that leaped between them. It was the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s awakening of Adam, the divine spark given from Jehovah. But that was a fresco, this was real. The kinetic gift of the vital life force. The man got to his feet, bowed to the woman, to me, then returned to where he had originally appeared. I turned my eyes back to the figure under the veil. Her hand and arm had been withdrawn beneath the draperies again, the disguise assumed again.

Who was she? Who was she meant to be?

I had thought at first it must be the Corn Maiden. But, observing her, I realized she had come in a form different from what I expected, something other than what I had seen in the quilt. I sensed it was not she but someone else, someone whose identity I was supposed to guess. The sphinx. In her very being lay the conundrum. Tell me who I am, she seemed to say. She remained motionless for a period, as if giving me time to make my guess; then she lifted her hands outward from her sides, and they met slowly over her head, raising the veil as the covered fingers touched above. I was both shocked and excited as I realized that under the veil she was completely naked, and I could see the gleam of her thighs, pale and marmoreal in the moonlight, with the dark, mysterious cleft between.

I thought she must remove the veil. I thought she must invite me, make some gesture, some signal that I was to come to her, to take the place of the other figure, but when the hem of the drapery had lifted almost to the waist, it immediately dropped again. I rose and took a step forward, revealing myself. I looked to the place where the man had been standing, but he had disappeared. Then the woman figure inclined her head beneath the veil, posed for an instant, turned, and stepped from the grass onto the strip of dark earth, into the shadows of the cornstalks, then into the corn itself.

She was gone.

I ran partway down the lawn, then stopped. I was not meant to follow. Something had been revealed to me, not only the woman’s charms, but also some deeper, metaphysical equation I could not solve. Watching the field, I heard the dry bone sound I had heard earlier, followed by a short flute passage, brief but effective, like the final coda in the Strauss Till Eulenspiegel. A beguiling strain, yet somehow mocking, as though the whole thing had been a game, some little divertissement for an autumn evening.

All was silence. I turned and went back up the lawn to the terrace. I found the peg for the cask, fitted it in, picked up the glasses, and carried them and the keg into the house. I rinsed out the glasses and set them in the rack. I let the cold water run on my hand; the flow had an incredible feeling to it. I turned off the tap and put the cask on the topmost shelf of one of the cupboards. I locked the kitchen door, switched off the lights, went through the hall, checked that the front door was locked, and went upstairs. I stopped and listened at Kate’s door, then opened it softly. She was asleep. I closed it again, and crossed the hall to our bedroom. The door was ajar. I went in to find Beth in the rocking chair by the window. Her hand was raised in what appeared to be a gesture, and at first I thought she was motioning to someone; then I saw she was only reaching for the tassel of the shade. She drew it down, and her hand dropped into her lap. She spoke softly, calling me darling, and rose to extinguish the only light, the small one on the bureau. She disrobed and got onto the bed, which she had turned down. She was waiting for me.

The moonlight streamed through the front windows, enough to undress by. I was careful with my clothes, folding them and placing them on the chair, my shoes beneath, and when I turned again Beth drew a little breath as I went to her, and I thought of a bride on her wedding night, waiting to submit to the demands of her spouse. But when I took her it was no virgin I took, but a woman, versed and capable, as accomplished a lover as any man could hope for. We were together as we had never been before, not even in the days of the Rue du Bac in Paris, a meeting of two people that was not only physical but spiritual as well, and if ever we knew one another, it was on that night when we had drunk from the Widow Fortune’s little wooden cask and the flutes had played.

Afterward, while Beth slept, I rose again and went into the bathroom. From the window over the radiator, I could look down onto the terrace, the lawn, the meadow, and the cornfield, all moon-flooded, and it seemed that I could see one of the figures standing there again, where it had stood before. Not the woman; the man-a dark shape, forming the figure of straw and corn, waiting. For what? I told myself that now I was really imagining, but I have since thought differently. Was it he, truly, the Harvest Lord?

I looked a moment longer, trying to make out the figure, and then it was gone. If it had returned at all. Or if it had ever been there. Getting back into bed, settling myself under the sheet, my head on the pillow, my arm around Beth’s shoulders, I pictured again the mysterious figure of the woman. Who was she? Or, rather, who was she meant to be? I recalled the Widow’s words about the riddle of the sphinx; now I had been provided with my own riddle to solve. I remember that the last thing I thought of were the old lady’s words: A man must learn to discover what is possible.

Then I fell into a dreamless sleep.