Harvest Home

1

I awakened that morning to birdsong. It was only the little yellow bird who lives in the locust tree outside our bedroom window, but I could have wrung his neck, for it was not yet six and I had a hangover. That was in late summer, before Harvest Home, before the bird left its nest for the winter. Now it is spring again, alas, and as predicted the yellow bird has returned. The Eternal Return, as they call it here. Thinking back from this day to that one nine months ago, I now imagine the bird to have been sounding a warning. But that is nonsense, of course, for who could have thought it was a bird of ill omen, that little creature?

During the first long summer, its cheerful notes seemed to stand both as a mark of fulfillment and as a promise of profound happiness, signifying the achievement of our hearts’ desire. Happiness, fulfillment-if promised, they came only in the strangest measure.

The house, though new to us when we purchased it in the spring, was almost three hundred years old, an uninhabited wreck we had chanced upon, bought, and spent the summer restoring. In late August, with the greater part of the work behind us, I was enjoying the satisfaction of realizing one’s fondest wish. A house in the country. The great back-to-the-land movement. City mouse into country mouse. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Constantine and daughter, landed gentry, late of New York City, presently residing at 11 Penrose Lane, in the ancient New England village of Cornwall Coombe. We had lived there less than four months.

I had thrown up my job as advertising executive with a large New York firm and was now working as a serious artist, painting in the studio I had made from the chicken house behind the garage. My time was my own; I kept no scheduled hours, but worked as I chose. Yet, habitually an early riser, I liked to take advantage of the pristine morning solitude, often abroad in the still unfamiliar village environs to discover a housefront to sketch, a river view, a tree, whatever might catch my fancy. Today, however, I felt slothful. Hung over, lumpish, unwilling to rise, I told myself it must be Saturday, and hoped it was true. I was dimly aware that the day held some particular significance, though what it was I could not recall.

My stomach made a hollow noise, and Beth’s head turned toward me. She reached and touched my hand, the corners of her mouth lifting with the fleeting traces of a smile; even in her sleep she knew I was suffering for my last night’s overindulgence. I tried to give her back her hand, placing it where it had rested, at her breast, but her fingers remained entwined in mine. She offered companionable little pressures between them as she lay reclined at an easy angle, tendrils of hair partly covering her closed eyes.

I listened to her easy, rhythmic breathing, watched the rise and fall of her breast, my eye lingering on the rounded fullness of the pale flesh, the darker, almost carmine-colored tips under the pleated, translucent cotton. Though pillow-creased and sleepy, a trifle wan and strained, her face to me, sixteen years her husband, was infinitely pleasing. I was not only her spouse, her lover, but her admirer as well, and I speculated as to how many married couples were as good friends as we were.

As I gazed at her, not wanting to wake her, I realized that her face was thinner. Since our coming to the village, with the work and worry of the house, and the continuing crises with our young teenage daughter Kate, fatigue had shown itself, and I wondered if having traded being city mice for being country mice was not a mistake.

She was not asleep. The smile widened lazily, her lids fluttered, she drew a luxurious breath, and opened her eyes.

“Good morning, darling.”

I smiled back and said good morning.

“Hung over?”

“Mm.”

“Poor sweet.”

A blue vein throbbed in her neck and I bent and pressed my mouth to it. Her arm came around my head, holding it there, her fingers playing in my hair. My wife, my love. She moved closer, her hand sliding down my cheek, feeling my night’s growth of whiskers. “Bluebeard,” she murmured, and I turned my head to find her lips. I kissed the sleep from her mouth and from her eyes; gentle kisses, but as her body pressed against mine I felt a stirring, a compelling surge. She must have felt it, too, for contented sounds came from behind her lips, and I pulled her nearer still. It was not our custom to make love in the morning-we had not, in fact, made love for some time-but quite suddenly, of all ideas it seemed the best and the most natural.

I waited while she disengaged herself, slid from under the sheet on her side of the bed, and stood. Splaying her fingers, she combed them through her hair and shook it out. It fell across her face again, obscuring her profile as she looked down to undo her nightgown. Sun rays filtering through the window framed her from behind, the flesh opaquely dark against the sheer white fabric, and the melting light produced a sort of corona around the sweep of her hair. She raised the shift over her head, bending to lay it aside with a grace and innocence that reminded me of one of those lovely pastel bathers of Degas.

When she put herself into my arms, she was warm and smelled of sleep and softness. I could feel the fragile cage of her ribs under the flesh of her back as she arched against me; yes, she was thinner. We made love affectionately, communicatively, tenderly, but without passion; we had become too used to each other, and to the act, for it to hold any new mysteries. Beth’s nature was not one of passion, but rather of compliancy. She was accessible, submissive, yielding in a mild, utterly feminine way. Myself, I did not dream of great passions; she was my wife, I loved her, we had a child, and though we could not have another, still we were a family. I had never been unfaithful, either in body or in spirit, and if passion was lacking, there were other things, more important things, that made up for the lack.

Later, we lay still joined, uttering satisfied resonances into each other’s necks and cheeks. I remember thinking how lucky I was, feeling safe and secure in the world we were creating for ourselves, this new world in the village of Cornwall Coombe. And this, our bedroom, seemed the very heart, the alive and throbbing, most particular and exact center of that world. Lying at peace, I let my eye rove around its already familiar, lived-in spaces, enjoying the pale buttery yellow of the simple plaster walls that took the sunlight and amplified it, the thick, creamy enameled woodwork, the matching Chippendale chests serving as bureaus, the Hudson River landscape over the fireplace, the airy curtains Beth had made, the bowl of flowers she had arranged on the mantel, her dressing table with its array of crystal bottles-perfume she seldom wore. Our room, I told myself; our house, our world.

And still the bird sang in the locust tree.

“Listen to it,” Beth sat up, pulling the sheet to her chin and leaning forward on her knees.

“I could have killed it. What’s today?”

“Saturday.”

“Thought so.” I snuggled some more, pleased that I had been right. “Then we can stay right here-”

“Don’t you know what day it is?” She laughed a gay, light laugh that was all her own. “It’s fair day, remember? The Agnes Fair?”

Of course-I had forgotten. The last Saturday in August was the day of the village fair, an annual tradition. I had been hearing of little else for weeks.

“Did I drink a lot last night?”

“No. But drinking’s never been your long suit.” I tried to lure her back into my arms. She resisted, saying she must get up and do the picnic lunch. Slipping away, she held her shift against her as she ran to the shower. I pulled the pillow onto my stomach and cradled it, stretching and feeling great crackings along my night-knotted frame, and wondering what the Agnes Fair would be like, this village festival everyone set such store by. Agnes-who was she? I confess I was intrigued by the prospect no less than Beth appeared to be. Where but in Cornwall Coombe did people have folk festivals any more?

I still found it difficult to believe places like this existed in the world today. Only it wasn’t in the world; it was another world, a world of its own. On that morning, I lay there thinking how perfectly it suited me. We had been part of that discontented host longing to escape the city; like so many others, we had sought to rediscover more stable values, to satisfy a yearning to set our feet upon the land again. We had become frightened in New York, of the lurkers in the doorways. So we had fled to the country, hoping the country would provide what the city could not: peace, tranquility, and safety. All to be found in Cornwall Coombe, and while Beth showered, I drowsed on the pillow, contemplating the joys of being possessed of an eighteenth-century house.

2

Sometimes we said we must have been possessed even to buy the house. It was a matter of the merest coincidence that we had found it at all, so out of the way was it. After years of Sunday brunch discussions with friends about the joys of country life, we’d begun hunting. Started close to the city, looked in Westchester, in Rye, in Croton-on-Hudson, Bedford Hills; then sneaked across into Connecticut, in Greenwich, Cos Cob, Darien, Westport. Took Polaroids of anything that seemed likely, then scotched them one after the other: too large, too small, too expensive, poor schools, not enough character. The truth was we were afraid to make a decision.

Finally, the decision was made for us, or so it seemed. In February, Beth’s father, Lawson Colby, had died. We had gone up for the funeral, and in mid-March we packed Kate in the back seat and drove up again to settle the last of his affairs and arrange for the storage of his belongings. When we drove back the weather was bad. There was no snow, but a fine sleety drizzle made the prospect of the long drive a dreary one. Beth was silent and withdrawn, haunted by whatever guilts she may have been harboring about her father; Kate, who had the sniffles, was in one of her moods.

Then, an hour or more along the way, the rain stopped and the sun struggled from behind the overcast. On Beth’s whim, we left the four-lane parkway and got on an old turnpike to take in some of the small towns along the way; then we left the turnpike and drove along a back-country road; then we got lost. We came to a place called Saxony, and that was on the map, and beyond that was something called Tobacco City, also on the map, and across the river Cornwall Coombe, hardly on the map at all.

Suddenly, as we came over a hill, we saw in the upper left-hand corner of a vacant prospect an old, swaybacked covered bridge spanning a narrow reach of the river. Though our side was still ghost-gray, the farther side was bathed in a pale yellow light, as though that land were in some way more special, more deserving of the benediction of sun, and as the clouds moved above the lowering expanse, I saw something that made me smile and wait for Kate’s cry. It came on cue.

“Look, Daddy-Mummy! A rainbow!”

Faint, yet it was there, a wide bridge of colors above the one of wood, and it was only inevitable that we find the route to the bridge and cross over. A sign read, “Lost Whistle Bridge.”

Had the sky been filled with fire and brimstone, a rain of St. Elmo’s fire, or some other ancient portent, a man might well have continued along his planned route. But a rainbow? Who could mistake that for anything but a sign of the most auspicious kind? Every schoolboy knows a rainbow is lucky; at the end there lies a pot of gold.

I turned the car, and what we discovered thereafter became a source of wonderment to all of us, for we had not gone far before I realized we truly were in Heart’s Desire. No more than a hamlet, Cornwall Coombe lay nestled among some low hills, girdled by groves of just-budding maples and locust trees. Everywhere the forsythia and pussywillow were in bloom, as well as the shallow bushes along the riverbank, and the air became suddenly flush with spring.

A remote section, its roads seemed hardly traveled, but for an occasional truck or farm wagon. First it had been only empty countryside, farms and farmland, sagging silos, fences of wire or stone, the fallow earth ready for planting, and not a soul to be seen. Then, rounding a bend, we saw in a large plowed field a farmer with a hoe. He was not, like the man in the poem, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” but a tall, upright fellow, a giant of a man, blond-headed and almost proud-looking. Alone among the furrows, he stood easily, the hoe over his shoulder, and he looked off at the tilled land in a waiting attitude as, over the shallow brow of the hill beyond, a horde of figures appeared, waving aloft a forest of hoes, ragged against the skyline. The man raised his hoe in a kind of welcoming gesture, and the figures spread out across the field, women and children poking holes in the soil with their hoe handles, the men bending to drop seed from bags slung over their shoulders. Now the holes were closed up, and, the planters moving in structured patterns across the dark umber of the field, the pallid yellow sun breaking through the slate-gray clouds, I thought of a Flemish landscape with its primitive simplicity, right and natural and perfect.

I remember experiencing at that moment an emotion I could not then-nor can I now-describe, a vague stirring inside me, some fugitive longing, a desire to stop the car, get out and feel my feet upon that earth, to be among those farm people planting seeds that would grow. Watching, Beth reached and pressed my hand. This was what we had been trying to express to each other, she and I. This was the reality of the dream.

The country road became a street: Main Street, naturally enough. Proceeding past a crossing with a sign reading “Penrose Lane,” we continued toward the center of the town, where Colonial houses bore plaques on their aged fronts proclaiming the date they had been built and who had built them: Penrose, 1811; Harper Penrose, 1709; Gwydeon Penrose, 1668. A good, Penroseate, New England town. Beth said it reminded her of a Currier & Ives print, and Kate squealed in delight at the flock of sheep cropping the turf of the broad Common in front of the white steepled church.

We wondered why the streets seemed so empty, for it was midday; then the answer become obvious: they were all out in the field, the entire village. We circled the Common, looking at the houses, the church, and other buildings, then drove back the way we had come. Beth squeezed my hand again, struck by the beauty of the place, and on that fine spring afternoon I had to admit it was unlike anything I had imagined would exist in this day and age. Its charm was instantly apparent, with an indefinable but unmistakable something that made it so attractive. Perhaps it was the spare, immaculate houses with their lawns just coming green, the plots of winter-tended gardens, the bright, beckoning window-gleam, the spruce paint on the clapboards and shutters, the lofty trees whose bare branches arched over the road.

When we came to Penrose Lane again, on the merest impulse I turned in. It proved an interesting turning: a wide, tree-lined street with handsome old dwellings behind elegant fences of wood or iron pickets, here a stone mounting step at the curb, there a stylish gilded weather vane atop a cupola.

Then, largish, dilapidated, forlorn, the house appeared on our left. We had passed the smaller house next door, on whose porch sat a man wearing dark glasses, while a woman worked in a flower bed close to the hedge separating them from the adjoining property. Perhaps I might have driven on by, but my eye was attracted to the brickwork on the chimneys, carefully executed work that said something to my artist’s eye. But it wasn’t the chimneys, really; it was the house. I was drawn to it as though it were fate itself, Kismet in clapboards. Without thinking, I swerved across the road and pulled into the drive alongside the hedge. Kate bounded out and ran up on the porch, while Beth and I sat craning our necks behind the windshield.

Clearly, the place was empty. The patchy lawn had gone to crab grass, there were weeds in the flower beds, the windows were bare with some of the panes broken.

“Oh, darling, look,” Beth breathed, opening the car door, and together we went across the lawn to the side of the house, looking up at the massive clumps of shrubbery under the windows. I recognized them as lilac bushes, and knew why she turned to me with her smile; I had brought her lilacs in Paris one spring. At the corner of the house there was a large locust tree, and up in the branches we could see a last-year’s nest. Abandoned nest, abandoned house. We spent some time peeking behind cupped hands through grimy windows along the front; then Kate, who had gone adventuring on her own, came reporting a discovery: a tumble-down chicken house behind the garage. While she ran around it making hen squawks I let its ample proportions begin giving me ideas about a studio. On the pitched roof was an empty dovecote, and beyond what must once have been a stable.

Halfway down the lawn was a large beech tree with the remnants of a birdhouse dangling from a lower limb. A hundred or more branches sprang from a triple fork which in turn grew from an enormous trunk, with thick, gnarled roots spreading out at the base. A beautiful tree, lofty and immense, gray, wrinkled, scruffy; it looked like a grand old elephant.

I put my arm around Beth’s shoulders and walked with her back across the lawn. Out in front, we went up on the sagging porch and peeked some more while Kate tried the door, which was locked. The living and dining rooms revealed some interesting paneled wainscoting and wide pegged floors, and the former a large fireplace.

We found our prowlings had not gone unobserved. The woman from next door stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at us. She listened affably enough as I explained we were interested in old houses-not strictly a lie-and she smiled when I inquired if anyone had a key. She told us the place had been shut up for years; it belonged to someone named, appropriately, Penrose, the village postmistress, but the upkeep had been too much and she had moved to other quarters.

Was the house by any chance for sale? I inquired.

By no chance, the woman replied. Not unfriendly, just firm. 1 wondered if perhaps she didn’t want neighbors.

Would it be possible to speak with Mrs. Penrose? I persisted.

Miss Penrose, she corrected, Miss Tamar Penrose would be at the post office, unless she’d closed and gone to the field with the others. But, the woman added, Miss Penrose would definitely not be interested in selling.

I descended the rickety steps with Beth. “Quite a gang out in the field.”

The woman laughed. “You’ve come on Planting Day.”

I said we would try the post office, and thanked her. I took the Polaroid camera from the glove compartment and snapped a picture. Beth and Kate were waiting in the car, and as I got in, the woman stood on the walk, watching. On the other side of the hedge I heard the sound of a voice reading aloud, and caught snatches of a paragraph I thought I recognized from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.

The post office was closed. I looked at Beth and shrugged; clearly it wasn’t in the cards, and I wasn’t about to track the lady down in some cornfield. Beth’s wistful smile said what it had at other times: Never mind, there’s a house for us somewhere. Leaving Kate to acquaint herself with the sheep, we walked together across the Common to the church, where a quaint black buggy with a dapper mare awaited an absent owner. In the churchyard a figure was laying flowers on a grave, an old woman in voluminous black, with something white on her head. Having no wish to intrude on her privacy, we kept our distance, and instead of reading the tombstone inscriptions as Beth had suggested, we admired the clock tower and belfry in the steeple. When we left I saw the old woman observing us.

As we returned to the car, we heard Kate calling to come and take her picture with the sheep. The shot came out darkish and I tried another; it was better. Pocketing the first, I handed the second to Kate, who laughed and showed it to Beth. It was a good one, a last memento of Cornwall Coombe: Kate’s smile telling her delight to be amid such exotic creatures as sheep, behind her the Common, the old New England church. Then, looking again, I saw in the photograph, standing on the church steps, the same figure we had seen in the graveyard. I glanced up quickly and saw her watching us from the spot where the camera had caught her.

Again on impulse, I left Beth and Kate and went back across the Common to inquire of the old woman if she knew anything about the empty house in Penrose Lane. She pointed to the post office, and I said yes, I knew about Miss Penrose, but did she think the property might be shown? She paused to consider, then replied she had no way of telling; you never knew how folks might behave around here. I reached in my pocket for a pencil, took out the first snapshot, and scribbled our New York telephone number on the back. If, I said, she talked to the post-office lady, and if the property might be shown, would she call me collect? She accepted the photo, looked at the number, then turned it over and peered at the picture. Nice girl, she said; handsome family. Then she made another remark as she started down the steps.

“Beg pardon?” I asked, not quite catching it.

“I said, ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’”

The picture disappeared among the ample folds of her skirts as she marched to the buggy at the curb. Getting in, she glanced at me again, and I thought I saw a twinkle in the ancient eyes. “Well, must get on for the plantin’.”

“What do they plant?” I asked.

“Corn,” she replied as the buggy rattled away.

There was little talk for the rest of our journey home. I was disappointed, and though Beth and I didn’t exchange thoughts we each knew what the other was thinking. We had not driven very far when Kate started sneezing; then she began a mild attack of asthma. We always kept a Medihaler in the glove compartment, an oral device which helped reduce the chest congestion, and when she had found relief I stepped on the gas.

If it had been spring in the country, winter still hung on in the city, dirty, slushy, blowy. Our West Side apartment seemed drab and dark and, as if for the first time, I saw how badly it needed repainting. Beth, naturally enough, was depressed following the death of her father, though she tried not to show it. Kate’s asthma attack had worsened, and she had to be kept out of school again.

I was edgy and nervous, and had another row at the office with old Osborne regarding the Staples Coffee account. The argument concluded, I burst out, ready to quit, and though cooler heads momentarily prevailed, I knew my days were numbered. The following noon, I resigned my position by mutual agreement. By four the same afternoon, Sandler-Haigh heard I was available and called to make me an offer; I said I’d think it over.

I had fitted out a small room in the back of the apartment as a kind of studio where I had been painting in my spare time, and there I retired, nursing my ruffled ego and telling myself now was the time. Get out of the rat race, don’t go back, do what you’ve always wanted to do. Beth agreed. We had saved a fair bit; there was a lot more to come from her father’s estate, and it seemed a good time, she pointed out, to take stock, I had begun as an artist, why not continue? I said I’d think that over, too-though I’d been thinking it over for two years or more.

What neither of us could stop thinking of, or talking about, was the house. Marvelous lines, I said; fabulous possibilities, she said; front porch would have to come off, I said; needed lots of chintz, she said; but we couldn’t have it, we both said.

Sometimes I would take the photograph of the church on the Common and sit staring at it. It seemed to beckon me, saying, “Come.” But if this was a form of destiny, it was a thwarted one; clearly we were not meant to come.

Kate improved. I went around the corner to buy her some chili at Pepe’s Chili Palor-as we called it, because as long as we had lived in the neighborhood the first “r” in the neon sign had never worked. Pepe Gonzalez, the proprietor, was out; his daughter ‘Cita waited on me. Poor ‘Cita: a dozen or more years later, she was still apologizing for the case of mumps I had caught from her when she was a child.

Kate got better, returned to school. Beth decided to paint the living room. I worked in the back studio. It seemed as if spring would never arrive.

Then, several weeks later, the telephone call came. I was working in tempera on a gesso panel when Beth came in and said it was long distance; something in her face told me it was no ordinary call. The warm voice identified itself as Mrs. Dodd; perhaps I remembered her, in Penrose Lane up in Cornwall Coombe? It was about the house next door, and if we were still interested, the house might be shown. Would we care to come up?

Would we! Leaving Kate with Mrs. Pepe, we set out early Sunday morning and got there shortly before noon. The weather was gorgeous. Spring had advanced in the countryside since our last visit; the dogwood was in bloom and the laurel, and rows of yellow daffodils blared trumpet-like in the greening gardens. When we arrived in Cornwall Coombe, I parked in front of the drugstore as had been arranged, and we waited on the Common for Mrs. Dodd until church was over.

We could hear the organ in the church, and the bright sound of voices singing the lofty chorus of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” the hymn swelling in the clear morning air. I looked at Beth and winked. The sheep were still grazing on the grass. Soon we heard the congregation giving the last responses, then the minister’s benediction, and people began spilling from the church vestibule. I saw Mrs. Dodd appear, helping the man in the dark glasses down the steps. Leaving him chatting with a figure I recognized as the old woman I had given our telephone number to, Mrs. Dodd hurried to meet us. She said her car was parked on the other side of the Common, and if we drove around we could follow her. Yes, she had the key.

When we pulled up behind her Buick, the old woman gave us a backward glance as she drove away in her buggy. We were introduced to Mrs. Dodd’s husband, who was blind. I ventured a commonplace about the church music, and Mr. Dodd said with some pride that it was his wife who played the organ. Today, Mrs. Dodd interpolated, was Whitsunday. I looked at Beth: did people still observe Whitsunday?

We drove to Penrose Lane, where Mrs. Dodd led her husband to the porch and settled him in a chair, made him a drink, then joined us on the lawn next door. The lilacs were in bloom along the drive, and a bird was rebuilding the nest in the locust tree, a little yellow bird.

The house, Mrs. Dodd explained before unlocking the front door, was one of the oldest in the village. It had been built by the son of one of the founders, Gwydeon Penrose, whose house was on the Common. This one needed a plaque: 1709.

A bit in need of repair, too, I’m afraid, she said as we entered the musty hallway; well, yes and no. The kitchen was impossible, but for money could be made possible. Likewise the baths. The rest was all we had hoped for, and more. Its charm was infinite. The wide hall divided the house; on one side was the living room, spacious, with pegged floors and the marvelous fireplace, and across the hall a large dining room with the paneled wainscoting under what looked like thirty coats of paint. Connecting the dining room and kitchen was a smaller room with another fireplace. I suspected it was what used to be referred to as the “second parlor,” but Mrs. Dodd called it something that sounded like “bacchante room.” It was only later I realized she must have said “back anteroom.”

Upstairs there were four bedrooms; the largest, with agreeable proportions, revealed another fireplace and overlooked the locust tree at the front corner, with the Dodd hedge below.

We came down, and, leaving the two women talking in the kitchen, I went out back to look at the chicken house again; I was right; it would make a perfect studio. Walking past the stable to the foot of the property, I gazed back at the wide sweep of rutted, weed-choked lawn and made silent decrees. There I wanted a terrace, there a wall, there border gardens. I wanted pigeons in the dovecote, and another birdhouse in the beech tree. I wanted the house painted white, with dark green shutters, and except for removing the front porch, not another line would I touch. The baths would have to be modernized, the kitchen as well. I would put in a picture window. I would clean out the chicken house and put in a skylight and whitewash the interior. I would paint the stable barn-red; I would find Kate a horse. I would have it all just as I had always dreamed of it. In short, I would buy the place.

When I learned how much it would cost.

I walked back to the house to find Beth standing alone in the drive under the lilacs. She had pulled a bloom down to smell it; then, thinking herself unobserved, she put her face in a bunch of them, as though wanting to drown in their scent. Hearing my footstep, she turned, and I still carry the memory of how lovely she looked at that moment, her face buried in the purple clusters.

“Oh, Ned,” she sighed; there was no need to say any more. While overhead, in the branches of the tree, the yellow bird feathered its nest, we, below, laid plans to feather ours. I held Beth’s face in my hands and looked into her eyes. Because of the old trouble, I wanted, this one last time, to be sure she was certain in her heart it was the right move. Her face gave me the answer. I cautioned her to play it deadpan and not seem too anxious; then we went to find Mrs. Dodd again. She met us at her door and ushered us into the sun porch, which also served as the blind man’s study, a small, many-windowed room with half-drawn shades. The walls were lined with shelves holding a helter-skelter collection of books, papers, folders, memorabilia. Over drinks, we learned that Mr. Dodd was, in fact, Professor Dodd, and had taught in a college in the northern part of New England before retiring. Choosing my moment, I inquired when we might speak with Miss Penrose about the house. Professor Dodd said there was no need; he had been authorized to make the sale in the event we found the property satisfactory. He would name a price and that would be it; there would be no dickering. I asked what that price might be, scarcely suppressing a look of astonishment when he mentioned a figure well under what we were prepared to pay.

We asked about available schools and doctors. Mrs. Dodd shook her head. The village could not afford its own doctor; the nearest one was in Saxony, on the far side of the river; he came in emergencies. Aside from him, the Widow Fortune, a sort of midwife, homeopath, and veterinarian combined, was all Cornwall Coombe had. Legal matters were usually handled by a lawyer in Ledyardtown. Though there was a school of sorts, most of the farm children didn’t go beyond the eighth grade. For those who wanted to attend, there was a high school over in Saxony, but hardly anyone from Cornwall Coombe, except the paperboy, went there. Learning was scant in the village. I looked at Beth; this was something we hadn’t foreseen. No doctor, no school; both were necessary.

There was, however, Mrs. Dodd suggested, a good place over in Ledyardtown, the Greenfarms School, which had a fine reputation. Many parents in the neighboring towns who desired better education for their children sent them there. No bus, though; Beth would have to drive. Car pool? No, none of the village children attended Greenfarms. If we cared to, Mrs. Dodd would take us over after lunch. I asked Mr. Dodd if we would encounter difficulty finding workmen to do the renovation; he mentioned a Bill Johnson, who lived out on the turnpike, and said this man could probably give us a more than satisfactory job. Mrs. Dodd offered a bite of lunch with them, but we declined tactfully. She suggested the Yankee Clipper, also out on the turnpike, or if something light would do, there was the Rocking Horse Tavern in the village. We chose the latter, finished our drinks, and when Mrs. Dodd brought her husband’s lunch on a tray, with the food carefully cut up for him, we left, asking if we might have a few hours to discuss the situation. Mr. Dodd said to take all the time we needed, the house would still be there.

Crossing the lawn, I heard again the voice reading from a book: “Miss Havisham often asked me in a whisper, or when we were alone, ‘Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?’” I recognized Great Expectations, and thought of our own.

We parked beside the Common, then paused to admire the wooden rocking horse over the doorway of the tavern, a polychromed figure with gilded mane and tail. Inside, the air was thick with pipe smoke and talk of corn among the farmers gathered around the bar; several eyed us with curiosity as we found a table in the back and ordered beers and steak sandwiches, and began exchanging ideas about the house. Beth laughed when I told her about having misunderstood Mrs. Dodd’s comment about the bacchante room, and said it cried for mulberry walls, and could we have a hunter-green sofa? She remembered there was a Victorian sideboard in storage we could hide the TV in.

Some others came in, an older man and five younger ones, and they also were stared at as they heaved past the bar with heavy-booted tread and took a table in the corner. While the men at the bar talked corn, these talked tobacco, a burly, almost ruffian-looking gang, obviously a family. The older one, an angry, bristly man, we decided must be the father.

After lunch, as we waited for Mrs. Dodd, we stood outside the tavern and had a look around the Common. This large central area of the village was more than an eighth of a mile long, oval in shape, encircled by a road which began at the north end where Main Street left off. On the west side were a Grange hall, a firehouse, and a grocery; then the post office, an ancient squat, oddly shaped building of wood and stone, with a large, lopsided chimney. Next door was the Gwydeon Penrose House, then the drugstore, a barbershop, and more houses. Our side began with the tavern; next to it a building apparently combining the facilities of town hall and library; another ancient clapboarded dwelling, now converted into a bank, with Ye Beauty Shoppe upstairs; more houses; and the church, directly opposite the post office.

People were taking their Sunday ease along the walks, looking in the shop windows or forming little knots of conversation, while their offspring played on the Common where the sheep bleated as dogs without leashes ran among them.

What cars were parked along the curbing seemed of Eisenhower vintage, their wheels and fenders still muddy from the winter. A wagon creaked by, a stolid farmer holding the reins. He pulled up, got down, and went into the tavern we had just quit, sliding a look at us as he passed. I thought how wonderful to hear horses’ hoofs, the sort of sound one expected in such a place.

Taking Beth’s arm, I walked with her in the direction of the church. An old man sat on the top step near the vestibule doorway, his chair tilted back, his lap filled with knitting as his gnarled hands plied large wooden needles. He, too, was observing us. I felt Beth’s hand squeeze mine, two nervous little tugs. I squeezed it back, and we strolled into the cemetery to wander among the tombstones again, reading the antique inscriptions. Like the living village, this dead one seemed well populated by Penroses.

We climbed a grassy knoll whose far side was also planted with graves, sloping away into a marshy meadowland, with the river gently curving inward beyond. A low iron fence marked the boundary of the cemetery, and on the other side, half hidden under a tangle of briars, was a solitary marker. Curious, I went to investigate. All around the plot the grass was long and untended, the ground wet and soggy.

I pushed the briars aside and read the inscription:

Grace Everdeen

Deceased

1958

Wondering who the unfortunate lady was who had been thus consigned to unconsecrated ground, I returned to Beth on the slope above, and we left the cemetery and passed the church where the old man pursued his woolwork-a muffler, if I was correct-his eye not missing a trick as we continued along the walk to the point where Main Street began. Then we gazed back at the panorama. The sun was bright, the sky blue and cloudless, and spring was everywhere. A man was dressing up a picket fence with a fresh coat of paint; another carried a bucket out behind a house and used an old-fashioned hand pump to fill it. A third sprinkled ashes on a cultivated plot beside his doorway, while beribboned girls dawdled over boys with Sunday-slicked haircuts. Another wagon lumbered past; a dog ran under the horses’ traces, barking at their hoofs.

I loved the feel of the place: the tranquil, bucolic look, the sense of peace that spoke from every doorway, from each plot of well-tended grass, from every newly blooming garden. I loved the solidity and agelessness of it, of the passersby themselves, simple country people with simple country faces. There was a sense of veneration for that which had gone before, a rigid, disciplined effort to preserve things as they were-even, perhaps, a reluctance to acknowledge things as they are.

Mrs. Dodd came for us. We spent a pleasant hour driving over to Ledyardtown, about fifteen miles away, and talking with the head of the Greenfarms School, where we were informed they would be happy to interview Kate for admittance next fall. The school, adequate beyond our expectations in such a remote locale, appeared to meet any educational requirements; there was even a riding academy where a course in “equitation” was taught. Kate would be ahorse yet.

On the way back, I mentioned to Mrs. Dodd that I hadn’t realized tobacco was grown in these parts. Oh, yes, she said, on the other side of the river it was all tobacco, used for cigar wrappers. Beth mentioned the bristly-looking man in the tavern. That must have been Old Man Soakes and his brood from over in Tobacco City, Mrs. Dodd replied. A reprehensible lot, they sometimes came over to buy corn to make whiskey with. Moonshining in New England? Indeed, she replied; the Soakes clan had been making bootleg whiskey for years. It was rumored they kept a still in the woods outside town, though no one had ever bothered to try to locate it. People, she told us, mostly minded their own business. Besides, Soakes’s whiskey was regarded favorably by the village farmers; and it was cheap.

We returned to the Common to pick up our car, again following the Buick out to Penrose Lane where, coming up the walk, I overheard another passage from Dickens.

We found the blind man in the sun porch listening to a record player, a device he called his talking-book machine, on which he played books that had been read onto a disk. Shutting the phonograph off, Mrs. Dodd offered us another drink, and we informed her husband we would take the house. A handshake was all he asked to seal the transaction, with papers to be drawn up subsequently, and we lingered in the sunny room for three-quarters of an hour, becoming acquainted with our neighbors-to-be. The Professor seemed to know a good deal about the history of the village and was happy to answer any questions Beth or I put to him. I tried to explain to him my feelings about the place, the excitement I felt at discovering Cornwall Coombe. He listened, nodding at each sentence, and when I had done he said it was understandable enough, but people often ignored the fact that life a hundred years ago was not easy. Time put a patina of affection on yesteryear, and we tended to forget how appalling existence could be in those times, how long and how hard a man had to labor for his food, how difficult childbearing was, how few medicines and conveniences there were; how stern the realities of life.

Tradition, he continued, was the important thing here: tradition and custom, customs that had been preserved through the villagers’ lineage since olden times. They were a tightly knit, insular group, these corn farmers, apparently determined to cut themselves off from the rest of society in an effort to preserve their own folkways, much as had the Amish in Pennsylvania, the Mennonites in Ohio. What had been good for a man’s father and grandfather was good enough for him; what they had worn, he wore; the tools they used, he used-a scythe to mow the hay, a sickle to cut the corn.

The Professor sat comfortably in his chair, savoring his drink from time to time, his head directed straight before him, his eyes completely hidden behind his dark glasses, whose side pieces admitted no light. The people of Cornwall Coombe were good people, he continued, from good stock, but their ways were different from most people’s, and they took a deal of getting used to. Some might find it difficult adapting to the village ways, he pointed out, with, I thought, a hint of something in his tone, as though he thought perhaps we might not be able to-or, to put it more strongly, not be willing to.

The village was not rich, which was all right; small, which was fine; quaint, which was nice. The farmers were sociable according to their custom; worshiped according to their custom; ate, drank, fasted, worried and wept, married, gave birth, and were laid to rest according to their custom; were not particularly interested in what went on in the world and, according to their custom, never went there to see. Were we, he wondered, prepared to adapt?

Rising with Beth, I said we were. We were prepared for anything. The Professor sipped from his glass and tapped his nail against the rim. He hoped, he said, we would prosper.

3

While Beth squeezed fresh orange juice, I sat at the farm table in our new kitchen scanning the morning news. It all seemed familiar. There had been another skyjacking, an Eastern flight. It was the second that week; the first had ended in shooting, two bandits dead in the cabin, terrified passengers, a disgusted crew. A man in California had gone amok, had killed his wife and four children. It made me sick to look at the paper. The trouble in Ireland-religious persecution in this year of our Lord, 1972; heavy artillery banging away on the Golan Heights; Americans dropping bombs on insignificant Vietnamese huts.

I turned the page to look for Peanuts.

“Don’t forget your vitamins,” Beth reminded me. She pointed to the array of capsules and pills she always set out beside my plate: ascorbic acid, Super-Potent B-Complex Alerts, Multi-Vita-Mineral tablets, brewer’s yeast, niacin, and riboflavin.

I washed them down in sets with the orange juice. Beth poured coffee from the electric percolator, then continued making breakfast while I sipped from my cup. On the radio, Milton Cross was advertising the “Barcarolle” from The Tales of Hoffmann, plus a million other sensational semiclassical glories, all for the low price of $3.95.

Beth paused to gaze out the picture window at the terrace beyond, with its unfinished wall. “It’s like a beginning, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Oh-today. Somehow it feels like a beginning.” I supposed the fair, locally signifying the end of summer, had something to do with her thought.

“A new beginning for us?”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe we ought to start by going to church tomorrow.”

“I didn’t necessarily mean that new a beginning.” Daughter of a minister, Beth had shunned churches ever since we’d been married.

“A token appearance might not be a bad idea, just to grease the skids a bit.”

She turned, brightening. “Have you noticed? They seem to be changing. Don’t you think they are? Toward us?”

We had arrived outsiders, city people, not wanted on the voyage. “They” had been aloof-not unfriendly, but as remote from us as their village was from the roads and highways. After our arrival, in my infrequent forays about town, I had met with singular indifference. Then, happily, and for no apparent reason, I began getting friendly nods, a word here and there.

Fred Minerva would come around to offer some canny advice about insulating the house or to dump a load of fresh manure for the new lawn; Edna Jones would stop by with a begonia cutting, some kale or Swiss chard from her kitchen garden. Suddenly I felt we had neighbors, friends, that we were at last becoming a part of the life around us and were not merely interlopers.

“It must be the Widow, don’t you think?”

I was forced to agree. At least I could see no other answer. The Widow Fortune had become our benefactress. Robert Dodd, our next-door neighbor, had said she was the oldest inhabitant in Cornwall Coombe, a sort of matriarch whom all the villagers respected to the point of reverence, a local antique. She was the woman I had spoken with on the church steps on Planting Day, and she was the first to arrive, in her buggy, at our kitchen door. I suspected Beth was right: after her had come the others. The Widow Fortune-I had told myself her name was lucky.

I beckoned to Beth, and she came and sat on my lap. I could smell the sweet, natural fragrance of her hair, the lingering aroma of the Pears’ soap she always used. “Is It O.K., sweetheart? You’re not sorry we came?”

“It’s O.K. And I’m not sorry we came. It’s just-it’s difficult getting used to their ways.”

“If we want them to get used to our ways, we’re going to have to get used to theirs. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

She got up and spun a little happy turn. “I love my new kitchen.”

“Beats Chock Full o’ Nuts.”

“Ned-you never had to eat breakfast at Chock Full o’ Nuts!”

“Only kidding, sweetheart.” Listening for Kate’s footsteps overhead, I watched Beth as she scrambled eggs, browned sausage, took rolls from the oven, dropped bread into the new toaster. Her movements were deft and economical, and she moved about the various work areas in a planned pattern, with no wasted motions. I found her extraordinary-but then I always had.

“Are you going to sketch after breakfast?” she asked.

“I’d like to finish those tombstones; then I thought I’d walk out to the Lost Whistle Bridge.”

“All that way?”

“It’s not far.” With my right forefinger, I felt the small lump that had recently formed on my left third finger, a wart which seemed the result of continual pressure from my various drawing instruments. “It’d be good for Kate to be seen in church, don’t you think? Wouldn’t hurt us, either, getting in good with the-”

“Natives? Maybe. But I don’t think Kate wants to spend Sunday morning listening to Mr. Buxley preach. It’s difficult enough-”

Still no sound from upstairs. Kate must be sleeping late- not unusual; she didn’t rest well at night. A violent asthmatic since the age of nine, our daughter had been subject to even more vicious attacks since coming to Cornwall Coombe. At that very moment, we didn’t know what condition she would appear in, whether, in fact, she would be able to go to the fair at all. Or want to. Kate was difficult. Still, we offered ourselves the pretense that all was well, and hoped we were right.

While breakfast cooked, Beth brought things from the refrigerator and began making the picnic lunch, stuffing plump chicken breasts with a tempting mixture from a blue-ringed mixing bowl.

I squinted at her, reducing her figure to a silhouette, taking in the series of curves and angles, the splash of dark hair falling over one eye. Bethany Constantine, nee Colby; thirty-seven years old; Scotch-Irish-English ancestry; Miss Kemp’s School, Boston; Bennington, Liberal Arts major. Measurements: 35”, 28”, 32”; trim, neat body; a full mouth, perhaps a little too wide for the triangular face; a pussycat sort of face, quick to smile, not so fast to frown.

But thinner. And dark smudges under the eyes; a brittleness to her posture betraying the fatigue that caused her extra effort in standing straight.

“Aren’t you eating?”

“Certainly.” She was snitching bits from the pans on the stove while she continued working. She found a paring knife in a drawer, pulled out the chopping board, and began chopping chives. She made an exasperated sound as she stopped and drew her thumb over the edge of the knife blade.

“Honestly, I paid Jack Stump thirty-five cents for this knife, and I don’t think it would cut warm butter.” She laid it aside and finished the job with another. “I swear he could sell ice to an Eskimo.” Jack Stump was an itinerant door-to-door peddler who regularly came bouncing his cart up to the kitchen door, trying to soft-soap Beth into buying the latest cooking gadget or housewife’s convenience.

“Haven’t seen Jack in a while,” I remarked.

“I know. Hasn’t been around in days. Thank God for small favors. I never heard a man talk so much.”

Movement upstairs: Kate was awake. Beth heard the sounds, too. She looked at the ceiling, glanced at me, then returned her attention to the chives.

“More coffee, darling?”

“Um-hmm.” A woman in Ohio had drowned her baby in a bathtub. Someone had done the same thing the day before. I looked at the date on the newspaper. “This is yesterday’s!”

“Paper didn’t come yet this morning.”

“Didn’t?”

“No. And Worthy’s usually Johnny-on-the-spot. You don’t suppose he’s sick?”

“I saw him in the drugstore yesterday.”

Beth brought a cloth and napkins from a drawer, the checked ones she had found when we were in Paris. I took a cinnamon bun, my cup and saucer, yesterday’s paper, and went through the open doorway into the bacchante room. From the kitchen I could hear pleasant domestic sounds: the slam of the refrigerator door, running water, the garbage disposal, Beth humming along with the radio. I got a pencil and began the crossword puzzle. Presently she came in and leaned over the back of the sofa to raise the window behind me. “What a lovely day.” She straightened the things on the piecrust table, and pulled a few leaves from the flower arrangement on the sideboard. “It’s such a nice room, isn’t it? Such a nice house. Aren’t we lucky Tamar Penrose decided to sell!” She kissed the top of my head. Remembering what the place had looked like when we moved in, I inwardly winced and thought back over the endless weeks of renovation: the torn-up rooms, the paint smells, the insidious silt of plaster dust on everything, our tired bodies dropping into bed at night. Now the work was almost done. New kitchen, new bathrooms, new hardware, new screens and awnings. The insulation men were finished, the floor men, the electricians, the heating men. The house was painted inside and out, the dining room papered; Lawson Colby’s furniture, a collection of good antiques, had been brought from storage and arranged in the rooms. Among the remaining jobs were the terrace wall and the skylight in the studio. But our mainstay, Bill Johnson, was leaving next week to spend the autumn and winter in Las Vegas, and we would have to look elsewhere for a handyman.

“I think she’s got designs on you.”

“Huh? Who?”

“Tamar Penrose. I see her making goo-goo eyes at you when we go in the post office.” Tamar Penrose had designs on me? I recalled the way she would manage to stretch across the post-office counter, or sling her hips while lounging at the postal scales. Still, designs? We’d hardly exchanged two words.

“Half the village is named Penrose, from what I can see,” I said.

“It’s awful the way they’ve inbred. They’re all direct descendants of the original family. ‘Once or twice removed,’ cousins marrying cousins-that sort of thing. Some of them are a little-you know.” She tapped her temple. “Like Amys.”

“Amos who?”

“Not ‘A-m-o-s’,’’ she spelled “‘A-m-y-s.’ He’s that marvelous old curmudgeon who sweeps the streets and rings the church bell. The one Kate calls ‘vinegar puss.’ And the Widow’s husband was a Penrose on his mother’s side.”

“Was he-?” I tapped my temple.

“Oh, I don’t think so. How old do you think she is?”

“Who?” I was trying to think of a four-letter word for “decree.”

“The Widow.”

“Dunno.” I wrote in “fiat.”

“I suppose she could be anywhere from sixty to ninety. Maggie Dodd says it’s the best-kept secret in the village.” She carried my empty cup into the kitchen.

“How long a widow?” I said through the doorway.

“Ages. Maggie says it was quite a love match. It’s the honey that does it, I guess.”

“Makes love matches?”

“No, dopey. It’s the Widow’s honey that keeps all those old farmers young. Mr. Deming must be eighty, and he looks-”

“Seventy.” Ewan Deming was chief among the village elders.

“The same with Amys. Half the farmers in the village are over sixty and they still work a whole day.”

“How do you account for it?”

“The Widow calls the body the human house. She says to stay healthy, watch the cows. Cows have common sense and know what to eat. Like lots of people don’t,” Beth continued from the kitchen.

I heard the sound of Kate’s feet on the stairs, then glimpsed her as she passed through the front hall beyond the dining room; in a moment she was with her mother.

“Hi.”

“Morning, darling. Sleep well?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t forget your vitamins, dear. All set for the fair?”

“Guess so. Bet it’ll be corny.”

It was going to be one of her smarty days. “C’mon,” I called, “it’ll be fun.”

Carrying her orange juice, Kate came in and kissed me. “Hi.”

“Hi, sweetheart.” Her hand trembled as she drank from her glass, and I could tell she’d had another bad night.

“It’s not every day you get to go to a real country fair.”

“Cut the commercial, Daddy.” She stared out the window, popping the vitamins between gulps. Her sleepy face looked doleful and lethargic. Kate with her unmanageable hair, her urchin’s face, her sandpapery voice-poor knobby, angry Kate. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face pale.

“They sure got a lot of yokels around here.”

“Yokels?”

“And some of ‘em are crazy.”

“Who’s crazy? I haven’t seen anyone crazy.”

“Missy Penrose is crazy.”

“Darling, don’t say that,” Beth said from the kitchen. “Missy’s not crazy; she’s a little unusual, that’s all.”

“And she’s a bastard.”

Worse than smarty; mean. When these moods came upon her, a result of lost sleep, it was difficult to know how to handle her. “Lots of children are illegitimate, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less or any worse than we are. People can’t help the circumstances of their birth.”

“She’s still crazy. She hardly ever talks, she mumbles, and when she does talk she says nutty things. And she goes into the woods to trade looks with the boys. And her mother’s a sex fiend.”

Through the doorway, I caught Beth’s eye as it flashed a humorous look at me behind Kate’s back: Has designs on you. “Come and have your Granola, dear.”

“Not hungry.”

“Kate, you’ve got to eat something. I’ve got scrambled eggs and sausage. Honestly, with people-”

“-starving in India; I know.” Kate ambled into the kitchen and I heard a chair scrape the floor as she sat at the table. “What are we having for lunch?”

“Darling, try to think about your breakfast first, huh? We’re having vichyssoise with chopped chives, chicken breasts stuffed with crab-”

“What’s for dessert?”

“Mousse au chocolat.”

“Are there any extras?”

“No. And you’re having fruit cup, anyway. You know what the Widow said about sweets. There are four mousses-two for your father and me, two for the Dodds.”

“Rats.” There was a pause while Kate munched a piece of toast, then: “Daddy, you know what an oracle is?”

“I have an idea-”

“Like they have at Delphi, right? And it tells you things, right? Well, Missy Penrose is supposed to be an oracle.”

“Is she filled with revelation, then?” I managed to suppress my smile by turning it into a yawn.

“Don’t laugh. They really believe it. You know about the Minervas’ barn?”

“Kate,” Beth put in, “that’s just a story; nobody believes it-”

“Sure they do. They really do. Yokels.”

Fred Minerva had been having a run of bad luck, all of which had stemmed, or so the villagers maintained, from his stumbling in the dance at Spring Festival. Soon after, he stepped on a rake and got blood poisoning; then his barn had caught fire in a July electric storm.

“But before it burned,” Kate went on, “he asked Missy Penrose if he should build a cupola and have a weather vane, and she told him, ‘Save wood, save iron.’ She was telling him a cupola and a weather vane would be a waste because the barn was going to burn, and it did.”

“Haven’t they ever heard about lightning rods?” Beth said.

“They don’t have them,” I said. “It’s not permitted. Nor insurance.”

“But it only stands to reason-”

“They’re not interested in reason, sweetheart. It’s the custom.”

“See? Yokels.” Kate put down her fork and went to the refrigerator. Beth said, “Darn, I’ve forgotten the picnic hamper. Now, where did I see it last?” She went out through the hall. Kate was rummaging in the refrigerator freezing compartment.

“Kate, are you happy here?” I said.

“Sure. I guess so.”

“Are you looking forward to school?”

“Um.” She closed the refrigerator and got a spoon from the drawer.

“We can always move back to Seventy-Eighth Street.”

“Aw c’mon, Daddy.” She ate for a moment. Then: “You said I could have a horse.” Angry, resentful.

“Sorry, sweetheart, you know what-”

“The doctor said. I know.”

I felt guilty about the horse. Unthinkingly I had promised it before we left New York, not realizing then the serious allergic effects of animals on Kate’s asthma. The doctor in Saxony, who had been treating her, had told us to keep her from direct contact with any four-footed creatures, but the trouble was far more serious than a mere allergy.

Since the age of nine, Kate had suffered from a congenital condition known as status asthmaticus, which continually imperiled her life. After years of treatment, to little effect, we had learned from a new doctor that the symptoms were self-induced, a form of psychosomatic asthma, whose origins had been eventually traced to the trouble Beth and I had had between us six years ago. It was, the doctor said, Kate’s unconscious way of getting even with us. Once, she had almost died, and only the respirator from the fire department had saved her. It became important that she not get overly excited or emotionally upset, either of which conditions was likely to induce another attack. Her last, a week ago, had come as a result of her disappointment about the horse. There was a tantrum, followed by a seizure, and the doctor had to be called over from Saxony.

“It was in the attic.” Beth came in with the picnic hamper. “Kate, open the window over the sink, can you? It’s such a beautiful day out, a real New England day.” She set the hamper on the counter and turned. “Kate! Rocky Road ice cream? For breakfast?”

“It’s just eggs and milk, Mom, just breakfast food.”

“And condensed-milk sandwiches for lunch. You’ll be breaking out in pimples again, and none of the boys will-”

“-look at me. Who cares.”

After making an issue of the ice cream, Beth now chose to ignore it. Anything to avoid a scene; but while the rod was spared, the child was spoiled. I had long since given up protesting.

“What are you going to wear today, dear?” Beth asked brightly.

“This.”

“Blue jeans and a T-shirt? Wouldn’t you like to wear a dress? Something pretty? For the fair?”

“What’s so special about the fair, anyway? Honest, it’s all anyone talks about. Yokels.”

“Kate…” Beth remonstrated gently.

“Do you know they go crazy?”

“Who?”

“The villagers. Moon madness. When the moon’s full, they go dancing in the fields and do crazy things.”

I looked up from my puzzle. “Do they turn into werewolves and vampires?”

“Well, it’s true.” Kate banged her spoon for emphasis. “And there’s a ghost, too.”

“I haven’t heard anything about ghosts,” Beth said.

“There’s a ghost out in the woods-”

“Who told you?”

“Missy Penrose. It comes out at night and eats babies and goes riding down the road on a headless horse-”

I decided Kate’s sense of drama had confused local superstition with Washington Irving. From conversations with Robert Dodd, I had learned that Cornwall Coombe tended to be slightly mythic in its lore, but I had not heard anything about a ghost.

Beth tried to calm Kate, who was prancing around the table making wild moaning sounds and generally imitating a spirit. “Darling, don’t go getting excited now. Go up and put on a dress, please? You’ll look so pretty.”

When she had gone, Beth gave me a brief look and I knew what she was thinking. What are we going to do about her? It was the one thing troubling our existence, and the thing we both felt guilty about.

I could hear the creak of the wicker as she filled the Hammacher Schlemmer picnic hamper. Across the hedge Professor Dodd’s sun-porch window slid open. In a moment a voice called, “Anyone up over there?”

Beth crossed to the sink and leaned to our window. “Morning, Robert. Lovely day for the fair.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Good morning,” Maggie Dodd called. “Marvelous day Just listen to that bird.” Maggie was enthusiastic about everything, as if she took it as a personal responsibility that we should like everything about Cornwall Coombe Yet it seemed to me that though her touch was light, in her own bantering way she was always putting the village down. “How’s the picnic corning?” she asked.

“Just finishing.”

“I think you’re crazy, doing the whole thing yourself. I could have done the dessert, at least.”

“I wanted to. It’s chocolate mousse. How are the martinis doing?”

‘I’m just going to fix them. Ned doesn’t want martinis?”

“Doesn’t like them.”

“I’ll put in some Scotch, then. See you later. I’m going; to get Robert’s breakfast.”

Beth turned off the tap, dried her hands, and began wrapping the chicken breasts in foil. Beyond the hedge I could hear Maggie speaking to Robert, then silence, then another voice:

“D’Artagnan trembled.

“‘Certes,’ said Aramis, “I do injustice to the beauties of this thesis; but, at the same time, I perceive it would be overwhelming for me. I had chosen this text-tell me dear D’Artagnan…’”

I recognized what we had come to call the Invisible Voice; the man who had recorded Robert’s talking-books. It was a daily sound that we had become accustomed to, and through the summer I had caught portions of the remainder of Great Expectations, followed by Madame Bovary, and this week The Three Musketeers. Robert was reading his way through the classics.

“Darling, did you say you were going out to sketch?”

“Mm.”

“You’d better hurry; it’s getting late.” I finished the puzzle, tossed the paper aside, and went from the bacchante room into the kitchen, then started out the back door.

“Wait, Ned.” Beth went to the cork bulletin board, referred to a penciled slip of paper and did a few rapid calculations.

“Have you got some cash? Stop at the Widow’s and pay her five dollars. We owe for eggs and honey. And here-” handing me a paper sack-”take her the rest of the cinnamon buns.” She gave me an uncertain look.

I took the bag, at the same time drawing her into my arms.

“Mm?”

“Kate-?”

“I know.”

“You don’t know…” Her frustration put an edge to her voice that I seldom heard. “

“You’re not a mother. You don’t know.”

I held her for a moment, then released her and said, “Don’t worry It’s going to be O.K.” But I said it with an assurance I scarcely felt.

4

When the great back-to-the-land movement began Beth had suggested we make a clean break with the past. By mutual agreement we decided that no New York friends would clutter up our guest room, at least until Christmas. Consequently we were both isolated geographically and cut off from our old acquaintanceships as well. Which was not a problem- our parents all were dead, and what friends we might elect to have come and visit could well wait.

Still, though I had never confessed my doubts to Beth, at times I worried. Where were we to fit into this yesteryear place? Apart from the Dodds, whom would we have for friends? How was Kate going to fare at Greenfarms School? Were we crazy, burying ourselves in a one-horse town, where it was necessary to drive way out to the turnpike to find a shopping center or to see a movie, where people still believed that what was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them? How could they talk to me of painting, or I to them of corn?

Therein seemed to lie the answer. When in Rome… Though I had never been intimate with nature, next year I would plant corn. I would plow up the field at the foot of the property and put in corn and beans and tomatoes and early peas. I would get gardening books; I would learn about the soil and how it might produce, even for a city dweller. Formerly a lover of the pavements, now I would be a lover of the earth. There, at the corner of Penrose Lane, on this bright morning of the Agnes Fair, I laid claim to the land, swearing fidelity to it. I felt it was as Beth had said: today was a new beginning.

I turned left onto Main Street and continued in the direction of the Common. The Widow Fortune’s house, several blocks along Main, was almost obscured behind a corn crop so high it hid a man’s hat. I had heard Robert Dodd say the old lady talked to the corn to make it grow, a concept I found fanciful, supposing plants must grow as they chose, or as they received sustenance; but growing because someone talked to them…

I went down the lane at the side of the small, gabled house and into the dooryard, where I set the sack of buns on the back-porch steps, next to a pair of worn shoes. Beside these was a bunch of flowers in a leaky pail. A large black iron pot sat over a smoking fire in the dooryard, the contents simmering and making thick plopping sounds. Savoring the aroma, I discovered other smells, the pungent musk of damp earth, the dusty tang of broken flowerpots and manured trowels, a tinge of fertilizer. Good country smells. Everywhere I looked, I sensed an earthy richness, an appreciation of growing things, plant life and animal life, all of life. There were patches of garden under the window sills and, along the fence, a bed of cabbages, their pale green heads set in perfect alignment, the rows meticulously tended. No weed, I felt sure, would dare show its face under the Widow Fortune’s careful scrutiny.

My eyes traveled along the rows, to discover the old lady herself, kneeling among the cabbages. Oblivious to my arrival, she held herself upright, with bowed head, her hands clasped over her breast, and I guessed she might be praying, though why in a cabbage patch I had no idea. The soft morning light lay about her in a wash of water-color tints, all mist and mother-of-pearl, violet and gray and rose; and observing the motionless form, I thought, Here is someone who appreciates the joys of a solitary contemplation of the day. Presently she lifted her head, and, still not noticing me, she rose, digging her fisted hands in the small of her back to ease it, and scanning the sky overhead, lost in some cloudy reverie. Then, lifting her skirts that she had pinned up for purposes of convenience, she peered at the ground around her and spoke.

“Come, now, slow one, have a bite.” She bent and broke off some cabbage leaves and dropped them beside a large brown stone at her feet. As though by some feat of sorcery, the stone moved. I blinked, then realized it was a large tortoise whose shell resembled a stone. While it proceeded to eat the cabbage leaves, she bent down and spoke to it like a witch to her familiar, then straightened, her black form real and corporeal amid the dissolving mists.

“Good morning,” I called at last. She turned, peering at me through round, silver-rimmed spectacles, waiting for me to approach. “Watch your hoofs,” she said in a forthright tone, “don’t tread on my cabbages.” A sizable woman, she presented a handsome figure, Junoesque in its stateliness: large head, straight neck, full shoulders. Though time had tugged her here and there, causing the neck to sag under the firm chin, her skin was pulled tight and shone with a robust glow over the rosy flesh. How old was she? I wondered again. Age had not seemed to wither her; there was nothing crone-like in her appearance; her constitution appeared firm, her heart stout, and if her teeth were not her own she did not yet walk with a cane.

If someone had driven up at that moment and asked me my first, surest impression of the Widow Fortune, I would have said comfortable and motherly.

“You’re an early riser,” she said briskly.

“‘Carpe diem,’” I quoted, watching where I walked.

“Can’t speak French,” she replied; the merry twinkle in her eye told me she knew it wasn’t French.

“‘Seize the day,’” I translated.

“It’s the early mornin’ that’s got the gold in its mouth, as they say. I like to be up before all the trammel starts.”

When she spoke, it was with a firm authority, a distinct voice that knew what things were about. Listening, she had a gentle, luminous expression, humorous but not mocking.

“Beth sent you some cinnamon buns for breakfast.” I nodded toward the back-porch steps.

“Well, now, that’s neighborly. I’ve got the kettle on; let me put the cow to pasture, and you’ll come and have a cup of tea with me.” It sounded less an invitation than a command performance, and I found myself nodding in accord. Her step was spry as I followed her along a footworn path to the barn, where she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, herding a large brown-and-white cow into a small pasture, carefully setting in the fence bar to keep the animal out of the corn.

“Brown Swiss.” She spoke with a touch of pride, explaining that the cow, whose name was Caesar’s Wife, was descended from the first herd of Brown Swiss brought from Switzerland to New England almost three centuries before. Caesar’s Wife was the Widow’s treasure.

She led me back the way we had come, stopping to stir the boiling pot with a large wooden paddle. “Hog,” she said briefly, and I watched the pieces of meat and fat rise to the surface. “One of Irene Tatum’s. Slaughtered it myself last week. Most mysterious thing! Hog had two stomachs, if you can believe it.” She gave me a look. “Guess what I found in one of ‘em? A collar button.” Her look sharpened, as though testing me. “Wouldn’t you call that an augury?”

“I guess I might,” I said, laughing.

“Sure you would. Anybody would. But what sort?” she asked in a dismayed voice, looking at the sky again. The pig, she went on, had been put down for salt pork, and she had made sausage with her own casings. The leavings went for blood puddings, and now all that remained was the head which was boiling in the pot; that would be for scrapple.

She pulled out the paddle, shook it, and laid it aside. Now she took a splint basket from a peg on the wall and marched to a corner of the garden where she began examining her plants.

“Only a minute,” she called, snipping several sprigs with the large silver shears suspended from her waist by a length of black ribbon. Someone was sure to have iced tea at the fair, she said as I came up behind her, and a sprig of mint always went nice. She held it out for me to inhale its cool fragrance, then cut some more and offered me another sniff; “Pennyroyal. Good for colic.” When she had done, she led me to the back door, took off her boots, and coaxed her feet into the worn shoes. Enjoining me to wipe my feet, she showed me into the kitchen. She laid the basket on the table and indicated a chair where I might be seated. While I put aside my sketchbook and drawing case, she tucked the cinnamon buns in the warming oven, put out a second cup and saucer beside the one already in evidence, poured tea, brought butter from the refrigerator, and a pot of honey.

The kitchen was low-ceilinged, small, and comfortable, and furnished with the clutter of a lifetime. One counter, on which sat a score of green bottles, with a scattering of corks and labels, was a small bottling works. Another held several shallow crocks whose contents looked as if they had only recently come from the oven: the blood puddings she had spoken of. A large tin kettle bubbled merrily on the stove. She spooned some of its contents up, blew on it, then tasted. It was not to her apparent liking, for she made a face, then bustled about, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, until the brew was more to her satisfaction.

“How’s your family?” she asked, pursuing these small homely details.

“Fine.” I noticed her hands, large working hands, yet marked by their own simple grace, shapely, tapering fingers and smooth oval nails. “Except for Kate-she’s been having asthma attacks.”

“I know. Asthma.” She spoke the word sharply, marking such a condition with her personal disdain. “That child oughtn’t to have asthma.” She took out the buns and set them on a plate before me. “Help yourself.” Her nimble fingers separated the small harvest of herbs in the basket, tying them in bunches and hanging them from nails set into the edge of a shelf over the sink. Everywhere were jars and other containers, filled with various herbs, stalks, blossoms, seeds-what appeared to be an entire pharmacopoeia of country cures. “What’s that used for?” I inquired, sniffing at the kettle on the stove which gave off an aromatic, almost exotic essence.

“For what ails you.”

I wondered if she was bottling the concoction to sell at the fair, medicine-show style. As though reading my mind, she explained that she did a satisfactory back-door business; hardly a soul in the village didn’t stop by one time or another for one of her herbal infusions.

Her eye fell on my sketchbook. “How’s the paintin’ comin’?” I assured her I was working hard at it, and had a New York gallery swindled into handling my work.

“You any good?”

“Probably not.”

“You’re a liar.” She beamed behind her glasses. “Let me see.” She leafed through the book, murmuring approval; then uttered a little gasp as her hand flew to her breast. I saw she had come upon the page of tombstones I had drawn yesterday. “My, my, ‘course you’re good. Dear me. Clemmon’s stone.” Gazing at the rendering of the grave marker, she seemed a trifle overwrought. “Aye, there’s where dear Clem sleeps.” Closing the sketchbook, she set it aside, and took the chair opposite me, stirring her tea with a small silver spoon. “Clem bought me these cups the year we was married. The whole set, and not a one broken, not even a chip.” She lifted the cup, staring thoughtfully at it for a moment, then sipped. “How long you folks been married?”

“Seventeen years next June.”

“That’s a good time. Must be prett’ near settled in each other’s ways by now. Marryin’s good, keeps a body on his toes. Me, once I lost Clem, I never cared to wed again.”

I watched her peering through the window at the great cookpot in the dooryard, following with her eye the trail of white smoke as it rose in the air. “Straight up,” I heard her mutter, “we’ll have a nice fair.”

She turned back. “Your place seems to be comin’ along, don’t it? You got a good man there in Bill Johnson.”

“Did have.” I explained about Bill’s imminent departure.

“Why, he didn’t say nothin’ to me ‘bout goin’ to Las Vegas.” She sounded surprised and a little miffed that Bill had not taken her into his confidence. “You’ll be needin’ another, won’t you?”

“It’s not easy getting help around here, with everyone thinking about the corn crop.”

“Things’ll slack off a bit now before harvest.” Her heavy tread caused the floorboards to give as she got up and tied one of the puddings in waxed paper and slipped it into the sack I had brought the buns in. “Got to drop this off to Justin Hooke’s. He’s partial to blood puddin’s.”

Justin Hooke, I had learned, was the tall plowman we had seen in the field the day we first arrived in Cornwall Coombe. Owner of the most prosperous farm in the community, he was generally regarded with a mixture of awe, respect, and benevolence. His wife’s name was Sophie, and their union had been one the entire village looked upon fondly. Justin must have been a decided favorite of the Widow’s, for now she placed another pudding in the basket.

“How’d you like that tea?” she demanded, producing a box from the shelf. “Weber’s English. It’s a One-B Weber, not a Two-B. I mail to London after it. Ever hear of Fortnum & Mason?” I said I had. “That’s where. Fancy store. They don’t seem t’carry One-B Weber’s tea in America.”

I carried my cup to the sink, washed and rinsed it, and started for the door.

“Off so soon?” She laid a large quilt beside the basket.

I thanked her, and said I planned on hiking out to the Lost Whistle Bridge to make some drawings. Remembering what I had come for, I gave her the five dollars for eggs and honey. She pocketed it and said she was going out Lost Whistle way herself, if I cared to ride along. “Worthy ought to be here any moment to hitch up the buggy. Unless you prefer shanks’ mare.”

Again I had the feeling of command, rather than suggestion. But, yes, I replied, I’d be happy for the ride. She excused herself, saying she must ready herself for the fair, then left me, and I heard her going up the stairs and passing overhead.

I wandered back out into the dooryard. Chickens and geese pecked at random among the rows of pole beans. In the distance the church bell sounded eight sonorous peals. Hearing a noise behind me, I looked to see someone pedaling a bicycle down the drive. I recognized Worthy Pettinger, who delivered the morning paper.

“Morning,” he called.

I returned the greeting and walked to meet him. “Morning, Worthy.”

“Sorry I’m late this morning, Mr. Constantine. Ma’s frazzled today over the fair.” He gave an energetic nod and his smile was bright as he took a paper from the handlebar basket and folded it. He was of high-school age, thin and lanky, with handsome, well-boned features, and a bright, eager smile; a thoroughly ingratiating young man. An industrious one as well; one could always see Worthy mowing someone’s lawn or chopping in a woodpile or planting a garden.

“Worth-ee?” A second-story window had flown up and the Widow’s head popped out. “Hitch up the mare and don’t dawdle.” She popped back in. “Oh, dear,” came her disembodied voice, “now where in the nation’s my brooch?”

Worthy kicked down the metal stand and leaned his bike on it, then deposited the newspaper on the steps. I ambled along behind while he went into the stable and led the little mare out. “Hey, old girl, hey, old girl,” he said cheerily as he slipped the bit in her mouth and adroitly maneuvered her into the traces. He brought the harness, hooked it up, and hitched the leads into the shafts, all in a matter of seconds.

“You seem to keep pretty busy,” I observed, admiring his dexterity.

“Yes, sir. Plenty of work hereabouts, if a fellow cares to do it. I’m trying to make enough money to go to agricultural college next fall. There’s still a lot that farmers don’t know about growin’ corn, even if they’d have you think otherwise. Organic, that’s the thing.” He spoke in a buoyant, forthright manner. “I figure by different planting methods you could maybe double the yield of corn. Good land around here, but people don’t take advantage of it. There’s machines that’ll do the work of ten men, with time to spare, for plowing and sowing, harvesting-everything.” He spoke to me confidentially: “I got a tractor.” I gathered from his tone this was a treasure on a par with the Widow’s cow. “It’s a beauty. I can take the whole motor apart and put it back together again, and she works just fine.” He spoke in such a secretive, guarded tone that I decided having a tractor in Cornwall must be a daring enterprise indeed.

“Why don’t the other farmers have them?”

“Not allowed. Machinery’ll put the small farmer out of business, and we’re sort of all in it together. But tractors could be the salvation of the whole town, them and harrows-”

“Shame on you, Worthy! Are you preachin’ sedition, then?” The Widow had appeared in the doorway, waiting while the boy led the horse and buggy to her. “Here’s a bun. Eat. You look thin.”

She had changed her work clothes for an elegant, full-skirted black dress, with a long black alpaca apron over it. Her white hair was carefully brushed and pinned up in a knot, and neatly covered by a snowy cap with a ruffled edge, the strings hanging down either side of her chin. The missing brooch adorned her ample bosom.

“Thanks, Widow.” Worthy picked up the paper and exchanged it for the bun.

“Don’t thank me, thank the mister’s missus-she made ‘em. Drat that newspaper, I don’t know why I spend the money. Nothin’ but rape and murder and higher taxes.” She flung the paper aside and went into the kitchen, reappearing in a moment with her basket and quilt, and a small valise made of worn black leather. She kept a watchful eye until Worthy stowed all this safely under the seat.

“Drat, forgot my shears.” Again she disappeared, returning with her waist girdled by the black ribbon from which hung the silver shears, looking as though they were the companions of her life. She took the flowers from the bucket, wrapped their dripping ends in part of the discarded newspaper, and added these to the other things that had already been loaded. Thus fitted and accoutered, she gave the boy her hand while he aided her ascent into the buggy seat. “Did I remember to turn off the stove? Worthy, run and look.” She turned to me. “See how a good-lookin’ man like yourself flusters an old lady.” She indicated the place beside her, I took it, she picked up the reins and gee’d the mare, turning the buggy in a wide arc so the wheels slid into one of the herb beds. “Hell’s bells, there’s my fennel ruined. Worth-ee?” She dropped the reins and waited for rescue. Worthy flew down the steps and led the mare from the dooryard onto the drive, smiling good-naturedly. “Think you’d never driven a buggy, Widow,” he said, returning the reins to her. “Maybe you’d better break down and buy yourself a car.”

“What should I do with one of them infernal contraptions? All smoke and noise and gas-eatin’. Better a horse that eats hay. Clem gave me this buggy for a weddin’ present, and I’ll be buried before it is.” She flipped the reins, the mare started forward, but she immediately pulled up. “I was forgettin’. Worthy, Mr. Constantine here’s goin’ to need some help around his place. Bill Johnson’s takin’ himself out to Las Vegas for the gamblin’. Think you might find some time to lend a hand?” She fixed him with a look behind her spectacles.

“What kind of work, Mr. Constantine?” I explained about the skylight in the studio, and the terrace wall. He agreed to come at the first opportunity and see what might be done, then sped off on his paper route.

“He seems like a good kid,” I offered conversationally, grateful for the Widow’s concern in my difficulties.

“Aye, Worthy’s a likely lad. Good as they come and better’n most. He’s cheerful and obligin’ and he’s handy. He’ll make a good farmer one of these days.” I said I thought it ambitious of him to want to go to agriculture school. She did not reply immediately, but sat considering the matter. When she spoke, it was with a thoughtful tone. “He’s only makin’ trouble for himself. Folks won’t take to newfangled ways around here. He’s got his heart set on goin’ away to school, but his father en’t about to let him. Him nor his mother both.”

I expressed surprise that parents would stand in the way of a child’s wanting to better himself. The Widow shook her head. “I s’pose it sounds small to you. But you have to understand folks around here. They’re set in their ways and it’d take one of them atomic bombs to move ‘em. Worthy, now, he’s different. Always has been. I midwifed him and I’ve seen him growin’ up spirited. Needs a bit of cautionin’ now and then, but he’ll do fine. They’re the hope of the world, the young. Your girl, now, Kate. Is she takin’ to our country ways? Does she seem happy?”

I said yes to both questions, and she continued to query me, a catechism that I decided stemmed from her sympathetic interest in Kate’s asthmatic condition. What did she eat? How many hours of sleep did she get a night? Had she ever been allergic before? What kind of exercise, and how much? Was she subject to fits of temperament or melancholy?

“She’s an only child, now, en’t she? Sometimes an only child’ll take on sicknesses a child with brothers and sisters never gets.”

I explained that while we had both hoped desperately for more children, Beth had suffered obstetrical complications and Kate’s delivery had been enormously difficult. I did not tell her, however, that secretly I harbored the fear that my adult case of mumps had left me sterile, and that it might be my fault, not Beth’s, that we’d had no other children.

The Widow’s questions next focused on Beth, an only child herself. And me, she wanted to know, had I brothers and sisters? No, I said, though Greeks often had large families.

“Fertile, yes.” She tilted her head at a quizzical angle, as though sizing me up. Her eyes twinkled as she said, “Beware of Greeks, don’t they say?”

“Only if they come bearing gifts.”

“Which you have-cinnamon buns. Wily folk, the Greeks. Look how they come in the night with a hollow horse to tumble the walls of Ilium.”

“I’m not out to tumble the walls of Cornwall Coombe.”

“Never knew the joys of children myself,” she went on. “Still, every last boy and girl in the village is mine, in a way. I like to watch ‘em from my parlor window, see ‘em rompin’ down the street. I rap my thimble on the pane and wave; they wave back but they keep goin’.” I felt her gruff, crusty air hid the loneliness she must have experienced during the long years of her widowhood. In another moment, she startled me by reaching out and patting my hand. “You folks be happy, hear? That’s all you’ve got, each other, and bein’ happy together.” I was about to murmur acknowledgment when the Widow called briskly, “Mornin’, Tamar. Mornin’, Missy.”

Skirts hiked up, her bare legs showing, the postmistress was sitting on a porch glider, braiding her little girl’s hair. The child eluded her and, carrying a ragged-looking doll, came down the walk to the picket gate and watched us pass. Framed by the red braids, her elf’s face was milky pale, pinched, and drawn-looking, and her large, washed-out eyes contemplated us with the dull-witted, curiously vague expression that can come of closely bred bloodlines.

“Horsy, Missy.” Slowing the buggy, the Widow jounced on the seat, making a to-do of the mare, causing it to bob its head and jingle its harness. The child made no reply, but only continued gazing at us. “Goin’ to pick a good sheep today, Missy? There’s a girl.” The old woman’s voice was friendly and hearty, and she gave a little nod of satisfaction. I had the sensation the child was staring not at her or at the horse but at me, and I felt unaccountably ill at ease as I looked back at the pale milky face, with its spate of reddish freckles over the bridge of the nose.

Her mother called from the porch, “Missy, come make poopoo.” Before obeying, the child turned, still clutching the ragged doll; again I felt the same odd sensation that the look was in some significant way directed toward me. As we passed on, I casually inquired of the Widow if it was true that Missy Penrose could tell the future. The old lady gave another nod; Missy had strange powers, of that there was no doubt. It was the freckles, she said, two dozen of them, rather in the shapes of the constellation Orion, with its two great stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel. These markings were the stars of her face, a kind of cosmos printed there, and as men might read the mysteries of those stars, so it had been given to the child to read other mysteries.

I continued thinking of the star-speckled face and the deep nature of Missy Penrose, and we rode in silence to the end of Main Street, where the Common lay before us, dotted with tall, spreading trees, the church steeple gleaming in the bright morning light. There was the bell in the tower, the great face of the clock below, and beside the open vestibule doors, old Amys Penrose, the bell ringer, dozing in a chair. On the Common, the green of the grass and leaves was intensified by the clarity of the clean blue sky and the white canvas of the booths and tents that had been set up for the Agnes Fair, with gay pennants fluttering from their peaks. All seemed in readiness for the day’s events: livestock enclosures had been put up, chairs and long tables had been set out for people to eat at, and three tall shafts had been dug into the ground for the shinnying contest.

The idly grazing sheep baaed as we stopped at the churchyard, where the Widow made her way to her husband’s grave and arranged her fresh flowers, then stood silently with head bowed.

I walked to the top of the knoll and looked down the backward slope to where the churchyard ended, bounded by the iron railing. Beyond it was the untended plot, with its marker almost obliterated by weeds and growth. Again I wondered about Grace Everdeen, whose remains lay under the forlorn tombstone, and why she had been forbidden the company of the other village dead.

I turned back.

Head still bent, the Widow was speaking: “Well, Clem, things are lookin’ fine for fair day. Now all we can hope for is the right choosin’.” She angled her head as though awaiting reply. I moved away, affording her a larger measure of privacy for this genial dialogue between the quick and the dead, which for some reason seemed to me a perfectly natural thing.

At length she broke off, raised her head, and, catching my eye, smiled. She came toward me, stopping at one point to look down at another headstone.

“Well, Loren, well,” she murmured, stooping to pinch off a flower whose stem was broken. “Loren’s gone, too, and that’s in the manner of things. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh.”

I looked down at the stone.

The inscription read:

Loren McCutcheon

Who Hoped but Failed

Age 28

“How did he die?” I asked.

“Of drink.”

“At twenty-eight?”

“‘Twa’n’t the drink so much-but the fall he took while drinkin’. Slipped off the barn in the night.”

I was about to ask what misfortunes had caused the unknown Grace Everdeen’s exile, but the Widow, giving short shrift to the dear departed, lifted her skirts and marched from the cemetery, shears swinging on their ribbon.

The street was quiet and deserted, except for the postmistress, who came along the sidewalk on the far side, leading her daughter, Missy, by the hand. When she got to the post office, she turned the child toward the grazing sheep, gave her a pat on the bottom, and sent her off, then unlocked the post-office door and went inside. The child ambled across the roadway and onto the Common, where she slowly made her way among the flock.

Meanwhile the Widow, hands planted on hips, was surveying the old bell ringer, still dozing in the sunshine.

“He’s a codger, Amys.” She chuckled and accepted my hand as I assisted her into her seat. “Forty years our sexton and still he don’t hold with Agnes Fair. Nor much of anything, if it comes to that.” She clucked up the mare and the buggy rolled onto the roadway. “Good Missy,” she called to the child, who did not look up but only stared at the sheep as they moved around her, their bells making a pleasant tinkling sound. The Widow snapped the reins on the mare’s flanks, a swarm of flies arose, and the horse stepped out at a smart pace, back the way we had come, heading out the country end of Main Street.

5

“How’d you come by that wart there?”

She had handed me the reins and now she brought my hand closer to her spectacles to examine the growth on my finger. I explained about the pressure from my brushes, and said I’d been meaning to see a doctor about it.

“Ha! You do that. Old Doc Bonfils over to Saxony. Maybe he’ll rid you of it-maybe he won’t. What you need is a little red bag-that’ll take care of your wart, and then some.”

“Little red bag?”

She laid her finger alongside her nose and closed one eyelid. “What we call the Cornwall cure. We’ll see to it,” she added mysteriously, giving me back my hand.

We were proceeding along the winding road, called the Old Sallow Road, which leads to Soakes’s Lonesome and the Lost Whistle Bridge. In the east the sun rose higher in a sky already pure cerulean. The corn grew tall on either side of the road, and when I commented that the year promised a good crop, the Widow agreed.

“I knew t’would be. I been listenin’ all summer to the corn a-growin’. Oh yes sir, you can hear it all right. You come out with me one night next year-don’t smile, I’m not talkin’ about country matters-and you’ll hear it too. The softest rustle of leaf, soft as fairies’ wings, and you know them stalks is stretchin’ up to the sky, the tassels is length’nin’, the ears is bit by bit gettin’ fatter, till you can hear their husks pop. That’s somethin’, on a hot dark night, standin’ by a cornpatch in the light o’ the Mulberry Moon, and hearin’ the corn grow. Then you can say the earth has returned the seed ten thousandfold.”

She pointed upward. “See that blue sky now, that’s God’s sky. And up there in that vasty blue is God. But see how far away He is. See how far the sky. And look here, at the earth, see how close, how abiding and faithful it is. See this little valley of ours, see the bountiful harvest we’re to have. God’s fine, but it’s old Mother Earth that’s the friend to man.”

And corn was king. Foolish folk, she continued, on a cold night might insist on burning their cobs in the fire. Burn corn? Never. Return the corn to the earth, bury it, then, when the plowman turned the furrow in the spring, the tilth would come up rich and dark against the shear, a fertile soil willing to bear generously for whatever hand was put to the harrow. Love the earth and it must love you back.

“Yes,” she concluded thoughtfully, “we’ll have a bountiful Harvest Home.”

“Just what is Harvest Home?” I asked.

“Harvest Home?” She peered at me through her spectacles. “Why, I don’t think I ever heard a pusson ask that before. Everybody knows what Harvest Home is.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s what comes of bein’ a newcomer. Harvest Home’s when the last of the corn comes in, when the harvestin’s done and folks can relax and count their blessin’s. A time o’ joy and celebration. Eat, drink, and be merry. You can’t have folks carousin’ while there’s corn to be gathered, so it must wait till the work’s done. It means success and thanks and all good things. And this year’s the seventh year.”

“The seventh year?”

“Ayuh. For six years there’s just feastin’ and carryin’ on, but the seventh’s a special one. After the huskin’ bee there’s a play, and-well, the seventh year’s particular for us. Harvest Home goes back to the olden times.”

“When does it come?”

She looked at me again as if I were indeed a strange species. “Never heard a pusson ask that either. Harvest Home comes when it comes-all depends.”

“On what?” I persisted doggedly.

“The moon.” While I digested this piece of information, she pursed up her lips thoughtfully, watching as some birds flashed by. “Three,” she counted, observing their smooth passage through the sky. “And larks. Larks is a good omen if ever there was.”

“You believe in omens.”

“Certain. You’ll say that’s ignorant superstition, bein’ a city fellow.” Most of the villagers, she continued, were descended from farmers who had come from old Cornwall, in England, more than three hundred years earlier, and the Cornishman didn’t live who wouldn’t trust to charms or omens: stepping on a frog would bring rain, wind down a chimney signified trouble in store, a crow’s caw might foretell death or disaster, and, she concluded, did I find all this odd?

“No,” I replied, “not particularly.” Being Greek, I knew about superstitions; my grandmother had been a walking almanac of “do’s” and “don’t’s”, including broken mirrors and hats on beds.

“Superstition’s just a condition of matter over mind, so t’speak. I’m a foolish old woman and I don’t see things so clear. Missy, now, she can see plain as well water.”

Again I saw the child’s dull but watchful eyes.

The Widow continued, “Take that collar button in the hog’s stomach. Missy’ll know for sure how to read it.”

“You mean it could be a bad omen?”

“Certain! It just depends. Still and all-” Her voice again took on a worried tone as she looked away over the brimming fields. “But what could go wrong now? Surely the crop’s grown? Surely we’ll have a bountiful Harvest Home? Surely God won’t take away what He’s promised the whole summer long. Look at the corn there, as fat and ripe as a man could hope for. Surely everything’s been done that a body could do? Surely seven years was penance enough?” Her rapid questions being, I assumed, strictly rhetorical, I could do no more than nod my head at each while I studied the mare moving in front of us. Yet her voice told me how much she, and the entire community, counted on the harvest. Finally I asked her what was meant by the seven years’ penance.

“The last Waste,” she explained obscurely, and went on to relate how in Cornwall in the olden times, as she put it, there had been the Great Waste, when the land lay under a plague of Biblical proportions, the crops blighted, when nothing would grow. It had been the fault of Agnes, that same Agnes in whose name this very fair today was being held. For undisclosed reasons, this Agnes of old Cornwall had risen up before the entire village and cursed the crop. In fury, the villagers had dispatched her on the spot, but as a result of her maledictions they had suffered years of pestilence and drought. Then, one night, the spirit of the dead Agnes appeared to one of the elders-a repentant Agnes-saying that if a fair would be given each year in her honor, the land would again flourish and the crops would be plentiful. Thus the establishment of the annual Agnes Fair, a provenance I found interesting if fanciful.

Yet the next part of this strange history as the Widow related it struck my ear as real enough. Thirteen years ago, right here in Cornwall Coombe, there had been another Waste; the river had not risen in the spring, the ground was dry when the seed was planted, the rains did not come, the corn withered in the husk, and hard times came upon the village. Small wonder, I thought, that the farmers were superstitious.

Behind us I heard the noisy clangor of kettleware, the familiar furious din announcing the various comings of Jack Stump, the peddler. Looking back over the seat, I saw him working his cart in a frantic effort to catch up with us. Never turning, but with a serene smile, the Widow made no effort to restrain the mare’s progress, and only let her have her head.

Jack Stump, newly arrived like us, had during that first summer become a familiar sight along the byways and thoroughfares of the village. His improbable-looking rig was little more than a pieced-together relic of a cart constructed atop the several parts of an ancient bicycle. Astride a shiny, cracked leather seat and flying a small tattered American flag on one of the handlebars, he would drive the cart, ringing a cowbell or squeezing the rubber bulb of a brass horn to witness his comings and goings; these and the continual clang and rattle of the tin pans, kettles, and skillets strung above on lines made a mobile pandemonium that alerted the countryside to his continual progresses. And where he came and went, Jack Stump talked.

“Jabberwocky,” the Widow said, “that’s what that one spouts.” She jerked her head to the rear where the peddler strained under his load. “Poor benighted soul.” When he at last pulled alongside, she nudged me with her elbow and offered him the best of the day and weather.

“Whatcha say, Widow. Whatcha say, sir?”

The Widow slowed the mare to a walk. “Well, Jack, glad to see we’re not harboring a slugabed. What gets you up so bright and early?”

He huffed, seeking his breath, until the huff turned to a wheeze. “I’m an early bird, Widow, catching my worms. Yes, ma’am, there’s plenty to do and I’m the fellow to do the doin’ — oh, yes. The way I see it, the world’s an oyster, and you got to be quick to catch the pearl-”

“Before-” the Widow tried to put in.

“Before the other fellow steals it first. How are you today, sir?” Before I could reply, he had his answer ready. “Fine, sir, fine as rain, I can see that. And your lovely wife? Fine, too, is she? Good enough. You folks come from down New York way, ain’t that so? Seen a bit of the big town myself in my time, damned if I haven’t-sorry, Widow-”

He was a scruffy old fellow, a mite of a man, all head and torso, with hardly any underpinnings to speak of. His merry monkey face was flat and wide. He wanted shaving, his teeth seemed nonexistent, and his hair stuck out under his ruined fedora like scarecrow’s straw, half covering large jug ears. He was scrupulously dirty, as if he worked at maintaining the traditional image of the disreputable hobo. In spite of the temperature, he wore layers of tattered clothing, and where a button had failed a pin would do as well.

“How’s your shears, Widow?” he asked, pedaling alongside the buggy. “Sharp as a tack, I’ll bet, darned if they ain’t. I sharpened ‘em up myself, didn’t I?”

“That you did, Jack.”

“And not a cent of charge.” He gave me a droll look. “Not for no Florence Nightingale such as this dear lady is.”

“How’s your backside, Jack?” she inquired.

“I’m sittin’, ain’t I?”

“Jack’s been sufferin’ from a sight o’boils,” she explained, solving the mystery of what had kept him from his daily rounds.

“And that’s no handy place, I’ll admit, for a fellow who sits as much as I do,” Jack continued. “But this sweet creature, she bends me over a barrel and puts on some of that there salve of hers- Say, Widow, what all’s in that salve?”

“That’d be tellin’. How’s the toothache?”

“Gone, just like you said.”

“Still wearin’ your little bag?”

He dug down in his shirt and displayed a small bag of red felt hung on a drawstring around his neck.

“No-don’t you feel inside there,” she cautioned as he poked with a grimy finger. “You’ll let out the charm for sure. Where you off to now?”

“To the woods.”

“Soakes’s Lonesome?” Her eyes on the road ahead, she spoke deliberately. “What takes you there?”

“Got to check my traps. I got ‘em staked out all through them woods-”

“Oughtn’t to go in there, Jack.”

“Haw-them Soakeses don’t scare me none.”

“You catch me a rabbit, I’ll make you a rabbit pie, Jack. Wait now, dearie, just a minute,” she said to the mare. “We’ve got a stop here.” She reined up the mare at the roadside and I helped her down. We stood before the Hooke farm, the largest and handsomest in Cornwall Coombe. The house was a gem of Early American architecture, with lawns and gardens in front, broad cornfields on either side, fruit orchards beyond, and cows grazing in the meadows that stretched away to the river.

“Shan’t be a moment.” The Widow took her basket and marched down the drive to greet the mistress of the house, Sophie Hooke, who was feeding a flock of chickens in the yard beside the kitchen door. She kissed the Widow’s cheek and they spoke while the fowl pecked at their feet. Suddenly a rooster appeared among them, sending them into a panic of squawks and feathers.

“That’s the biggest rooster I’ve ever seen,” I declared.

“That’s the gen’ral talk. Everyone says Justin Hooke’s got the biggest rooster in town, if you catch my drift.” Jack Stump snapped his hat brim and slipped me a lewd wink. According to village repute and ladies’ gossip, nature had generously endowed Farmer Hooke sexually; hence, “Justin’s rooster.”

“You mean the women talk about that at their kitchen door?” I tried not to sound shocked, but I was surprised that such locker-room subjects were discussed among the housewives of this community.

“You live on a farm, you see everything,” Jack replied philosophically. “They’re a bawdy bunch, farmers. Women, too. I tell ‘em the one about the fellow with twelve inches but he don’t use it as a rule, and don’t they squeal some! They know what Justin’s got, all right. I guess it’s what keeps Sophie smilin’! There’s the old cock himself.” He nodded to the barn where Justin Hooke appeared in the hayloft door. He swung out on the baling rope and made a dramatic sweep to the ground. When he, also, had kissed the Widow’s cheek, she lifted the napkin from her basket and offered him the two puddings.

Straddling his seat on the cart, the peddler shook his head admiringly. “Ain’t she a fine woman, the Widow Fortune? A good strong soul, damned if she ain’t, good for a man’s work as well as a woman’s, no worse in the barnyard than in the kitchen. There’s never a time I stop by her door when there ain’t a slice of pie or a hunk of sausage waitin’ for me. You’d look a far piece before you’d find a more kindly, generous soul, and I tell it at every door I pass.”

“Goodnight nurse, Jack, how you carry on.” The Widow had returned from her errand to overhear the last of his praises.

Doffing his hat, Jack bowed in a deferential manner. “The world don’t seem so bad a place when a man can find dear ladies like yourself in it.”

“Hush; enough.” She let me help her into her seat, took up the reins, and we continued along toward Soakes’s Lonesome. Here and there in the cornfields, I saw scarecrows stuck between the rows, rising above the tops of the stalks. Not the ordinary, garden-variety of scarecrow, these were fanciful fellows, decked out in extravagant bits of motley costuming and rags. There was one in particular, the head and body stuffed with straw and cornhusks, a battered hat tilted rakishly over one button eye, a long feather stuck in the band like a cavalier’s plume.

Just then two crows swooped up out of the field, their wings black and shiny against the sky. “Two crows,” I heard the Widow murmur. “Now, that’s bad for sure.” She shook her head, and clucked up the mare.

“Jack, I’m in the market,” she hinted to the peddler.

“In what way, Widow?”

“Old clothes. I’ll be needin’ them to make my scarecrows for next year.”

“How many do you make?”

“Nearly all you’ve seen. Hardly a farmer in the village doesn’t come plaguing me around Spring Festival time to do him up a scarecrow. Can you fetch me some good outfits? Somethin’ swanky?”

“Sure I can.”

“Cheap, now. I don’t pay good money for rags.”

We had come to the top of a rise, where Jack tipped his scroungy hat again and took his leave, coasting off toward the bottom in a cloud of dust, the echo of his tinware trailing behind.

The Widow laughed, watching him go. “His heart’s in the right place, but his tongue’s an affliction.”

As we moved down the hill, the cornfields spread wide and far. Past the fields and grazing meadows, the treetops rose in lush, billowy foliage, their leaves still a long way off from turning. A curl of smoke rose from the Tatum farm opposite the edge of the woods. Beyond the woods-Soakes’s Lonesome, as it was called-lay the river. On the other side I could make out the brown patches of Tobacco City land, where the crop had already been harvested, and the rolls of white netting which had not yet been taken down. A dirt road wound between two fields, ending at a jetty by the riverbank. A cloud of dust rose as a pink car, an Oldsmobile, pulled up close to the bank. Several men got out and clambered into a motor skiff tied at the jetty. Soon it was cutting a path through the water-the hum of the engine lost to us at that distance-and heading for a point of land on our side where the woods grew down to the river’s edge. I watched the craft’s progress, and as it approached, the voices of the men became faintly audible. When they stepped ashore I caught the dull gleam of sunlight on rifle barrels. Then they entered the woods and disappeared.

“Soakeses,” the Widow commented in a sour tone, as though identifying the men by name were sufficient to sum up their entire and particular natures. Forthwith she revealed to me the salient facts concerning Soakes’s Lonesome, whose history was an interesting one, full of the blood and havoc for which the Cornish people had long been known.

Originally, the sizable tract had been designated by the village founders as communal land, within whose preserves anyone was entitled to hunt or fish. Then, somewhere in the early 1700s, it had become the property of the Soakes family, who accordingly reserved the hunting and fishing rights to themselves. Though the village fields had proved rich for crops, the Soakeses and some others of the old settlers moved across the river, where, eschewing corn, they engaged in raising tobacco. The move, said the village fathers, constituted forfeiture of all rights to land on this side of the river, and henceforward Soakes’s Lonesome would no longer belong to them. The Soakes clan, then extensive, refused to relinquish its title, which was now held in dispute between the family and the people of Cornwall Coombe. The present generation — an old man, his wife, and five sons-were generally regarded as a fierce and savage tribe of “tobacco scut,” who for their part still continued to look upon the land as theirs; and woe to the trespasser.

Which, the Widow pointed out, accounted for the tales of the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome. A people who readily believe in ghosts needs must have one. Rumor had it the Soakeses maintained a well-hidden still deep in the woods. Some years before, a revenue agent had come to investigate; it was said he went into the woods and never came out. And around his mysterious disappearance there had sprung up a tale about the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome, whose shade was said to haunt the Old Sallow Road close to the Lost Whistle Bridge.

We got to the Tatum farm and the Widow reined up again. “Here’s where I must leave you now,” she announced. Across the way, a dirt track ran up to the Tatums’ back door, where the lady of the house was stirring something in a large iron kettle. Nope, not pigs, the Widow explained; Irene did homemade soap. Laying down her paddle, then pulling the smoking fire apart, the red-haired Irene bawled to her children not to track ashes in the house as they came from loading food baskets and hampers into the back of a pickup truck.

I took my drawing case and hopped from the buggy to help the Widow alight. I thought she would pay a call on Irene, but no, “I must be about my herbin’,” she said, “and you’ve got your bridge to sketch.” She hung her shears straight, took her basket, arranged to meet me again in an hour, and, so saying, picked up her skirts and made her way toward the woods through the tall meadow grass.

I continued along the road on foot, cornfields on my left, then an orchard, and on my right the curving edge of a palisade of lofty trunks, and, beyond, the dark recesses of Soakes’s Lonesome. A little farther along, I passed the peddler’s rig, half hidden behind some thick laurel shrubs where he had sought to conceal it-a precaution, I decided, against the Soakeses’ chancing upon it.

Arriving at the bridge, I sat under a tree and made several rough drawings, then began a detailed one of the portal. In exactly fifty minutes, I closed my pad, zipped up my case, made a quick tour of the bridge approach to locate the best angle for the painting I planned doing, and then started back down the road.

Again I passed the sequestered peddler’s cart, and, rounding the next bend, I glimpsed the Widow’s white bonnet bobbing among the trees at the edge of the meadow. I waited until she reached the road, then helped her into the buggy. Suddenly we heard the sharp report of guns within the woods. A voice shouted, and another; then for a time all was silence. In another moment the peddler’s gnome-like figure broke from the woods. He pulled the rig from its hiding place, ran it down the gully and onto the road, hopped onto the seat, and pedaled toward us as fast as his feet could turn the wheels.

“Ho, Jack,” the Widow called, “what’s about?”

He made no reply, but an expression of terror contorted his grizzled features. Passing, he gave us a dazed look, as though he had never seen us before, and hurried off toward the village.

Behind us, a formidable figure appeared between the tree trunks, a shotgun at the ready. He watched the peddler’s hasty retreat; then, shaking his fist, he entered the woods again.

“The old man himself,” the Widow said. I replied that I supposed he had caught nosy Jack investigating his still and had scared him off.

“It’s likely. Jack’s nose is afflicted, too,” she said as she took up the reins.

Well, thought I, if the sleepy, yesteryear village of Cornwall Coombe provided such intriguing mysteries in this ready-to-hand way, I would prove easily diverted, and without telling my companion, I resolved to find Jack at the fair and discuss exactly what had happened to him in the woods at the hands of Old Man Soakes.

6

With terrific rumblings and backfirings of failing motors, shiftings and grindings of ancient gears, the creak and grate of decrepit wooden wheels in the dusty roadway, amid shouts and calls and laughter, we arrived at the Common shortly before noon, along with scores of others, old people and middle-aged and young and younger, and crying babes in arms, to say nothing of barnyard beasts of varied description: cattle lowing, horses neighing, sheep and goats bleating and baaing, hens cackling, dogs barking-all these and more. Which was to be expected, for, like Christmas, the Agnes Fair came to Cornwall Coombe but once a year and, like Christmas, people were bound to make the most of it.

I parked the car close to Irene Tatum’s wreck of a pickup truck, and opened the door for Beth. When Kate got out of the back seat, we cautioned her to keep well away from the furred animals, then stood watching the holiday crowd, jocular and gay as they thronged about the booths, exchanging greetings and hugs and kisses as though they hadn’t seen their neighbors for a month.

They were mostly farm types: sober-sided, raw-cut, stringy men, but well-seasoned like old lumber, with bad barbering and a dusting of talcum, wearing workaday outfits, shirts open at the neck, patched and faded overalls; the women in plain, unfashionable dresses that might have belonged to their mothers, with light straw hats or bonnets looking as though they had been worn forever; the smaller girls in dresses obviously stitched up at home, their older sisters with buxom meaty bodies pushing at the seams of their colorful best frocks, their hair plaited with ribbons or hanging free and halfway down their backs as they grinned at the hooting overalled boys, replicas of their fathers.

A great scurrying ensued: the men hastening to tie up the animals inside the livestock enclosures; the women, with their baskets and bags and boxes, to set out for display homemade canned goods and bakery items, to spread out their handicraft work and sewing in the booths provided, and between times to gather unto themselves for purposes of gossip and news exchange; the children to lug chunks of already melting ice to cool the milk and butter and cream and eggs in the shade before dashing off to see the fair.

“Look out for King!”

Grunting and swaying, a giant hog footed its way along two planks from the back of the pickup truck, on whose dented panel was the legend “King the Pig.”

“Here he comes!” Irene Tatum proudly bawled as the animal reached the ground.

“Never seen such a clean pig, Irene,” a farmer said. “Could put that pig in your own bed and sleep with it.”

“Yes, you could, Will Jones, could you get your wife to move over,” Irene said, laughing. “Sister, fetch your ma her umbrella, this sun’s thick as honey.” Children were spilling out of the truck like clowns in a circus act. Using the tip of her umbrella, Irene prodded King to a standing position, and while a crowd collected, she showed the hog off as if he were one of her own progeny.

“How do, Mrs. Zalmon, Mrs. Green,” she shouted. “Junior, you get King over to the enclosure. Sister, bring along the hamper. Treat that pig like family, Rusty. Put him on the cool side so’s he’ll get the good of the breeze. Debbie, pull your skirts down!”

While they trooped off, along came the Minerva clan. “Your Jim’s growed some this summer,” Mrs. Green allowed to Mrs. Minerva. “Ain’t he a husky fellow. Could be he might be the lucky one t’day-”

“My Jim?” Asia Minerva looked both shocked and pleased. “Naw,” she said, “naw…”

“See where the Hookes come, yonder.” Mrs. Green pointed at Justin, who had arrived, his wife on his arm. As a feathery murmur swept the crowd, several girls hurried to cluster around him, Sophie standing a little to one side watching with an air of amused detachment, while her husband was offered smiles and admiring glances.

The object of these attentions, Justin Hooke, was a perfect child of nature. In spite of his country clothes and simple straightforward manner, he had an élan, a verve that along with his heroic size set him apart from his fellows. An altogether remarkable specimen of a man, tall, husky, broad-shouldered, bluff and hearty, a golden look to him, with his bronze skin, his sun-yellowed hair, the flash of strong teeth showing behind his easy smile.

Just now he seemed embarrassed by the flutter his presence was creating as the girls pressed closer about him, and I wondered why all the fuss?

“I’ve got gooseberry tarts in my basket, Justin,” said one of the girls coyly, and another hinted about her raisin pie; a third, making sheep’s eyes, asked if he were partial to stuffed eggs.

“Who will it be today, Justin?” the first asked, putting her hand on his arm. “Yes, who will it be?” said the second; then they were all demanding to know of Justin who he thought “it” would be.

There were more voices and laughter as other girls joined the circle, and calls and shouting, and constant comings and goings, and more newcomers. Worthy Pettinger arrived on his tractor, and from the expressions of some close by, it appeared the noisy gusto of his old John Deere was an affront to their ears.

“Ain’t Missy the prettiest thing in her dress,” cried Irene Tatum in her gravelly voice, while others agreed, parting and forming an aisle through which Tamar Penrose led the child onto the Common. “Did you pick your sheep, Missy?” someone asked respectfully, and “Good Missy,” another said, reaching to touch her ribbons.

Pallid, thin, with bony joints and brittle-looking limbs, and oblivious to the interest her arrival was causing, the child was regarding me gravely. Even braided and in ribbons, her red hair looked lank and limp, and I noted again the spattering of freckles across her nose.

Next to appear was Jack Stump. He wheeled his peddler’s rig onto the grass with a cacophony of tinware, sprang from his seat, and hopped about dropping the canvas tatters that passed for awnings on his cart and lowering the panels to display his wares. Now he produced a scratched and battered fiddle from one of the compartments, and then a soda-pop box, which he stood on as he began sawing away on the instrument.

The music was suddenly and thoroughly drowned out as, with horn blatting, a car careened in a wide circle at the edge of the Common; I recognized the pink Oldsmobile belonging to the Tobacco City group. Doors banged open and the five big and beery-looking Soakes boys got out; then, from behind the wheel, came bristling Old Man Soakes himself. Their arrival caused evident consternation to the musician, for the fiddling ceased abruptly, the instrument was whisked from sight, Jack Stump scrambled onto his seat, and, with kettle-ware crashing, he disappeared into the crowd.

Old Man Soakes’s look was grim as he waited while his offspring freed a galvanized tub of ice and beer from the trunk of the car and lugged it into the shade of a tree, where they flopped on the grass and began popping tops and passing the cans among themselves. Then the father busied himself at the trunk, bending to set out for sale an assortment of home-sewn stuffed canvas decoys.

Making my way through the crowd that now separated us, I found Beth and Kate talking to Worthy Pettinger.

“Worthy’s offered to show us around the fair,” Beth said, and as we moved off together I saw that Kate’s lively interest in the boy was masked by an elaborate show of indifference as he pointed out various sights. We watched the livestock competition, which had already begun; then the pie contest, where Robert Dodd was chief among the judges; then the trained bear; and the Punch-and-Judy show, a small, cheapjack affair that reminded me of one Beth and I had seen years before in Paris. While Judy assaulted Punch from one side of the stage, a white wraith-like figure beat him with a stick on the other, and the sorry victim fended off both spouse and ghost with equal vigor. When we left the tent, I made further reference to the battling phantom, and asked if Worthy had heard tales of ghosts around Cornwall Coombe.

“You mean the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome?” He shrugged. “Folks around here are dumb enough to believe all kinds of things. I guess ghosts are the least of ‘em.”

As we went along, Beth’s attention was continually diverted by the various home arts and handicrafts displayed at the booths: quilted bedspreads, crocheted counterpanes, hand-woven materials, figures cleverly carved and whittled from pine, little dolls, basketwork. “They could make a fortune selling these down in New York,” she said.

Some distance away, I glimpsed the Widow Fortune sitting behind a booth, talking energetically with Sophie Hooke, and at the same time doing a sharp business in the honey trade. Other booths had pickles and preserves for sale, fresh garden produce and dairy things. Strolling among the tents and booths, I was interested in the workmanship embellishing the canvas sides: primitive, country-type designs, crudely but gracefully executed with the naiveté of cave paintings. There were suns and moons and stars, various animals, a horse here, a cow there, a barn, a stick-figure man. And, everywhere, corn: sheaves of corn and shocks of corn and ears of corn, people growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, storing corn. Corn not only in its facsimile, but in reality, some of the tent entrances being framed by bound shocks and festooned with garlands of dried husks and leaves, and bunches of unshelled ears, their kernels yellow, red, brown, some variegated with all three.

Our guide identified it as Indian corn, breaking an ear off and tendering it to Kate with a smile. He seemed to sense her feeling of awkwardness and kept up an easy line of conversation which, while directed at Beth and me, was designed to make our daughter less self-conscious.

King the Pig, he assured us, was bound to win the hog competition. Farmers thereabouts had a way of letting their pigs stay penned up, leaving them to root among their own filth. He had persuaded Irene Tatum to try a new method, that of building King a movable trailer home. When the ground beneath became soiled, Worthy would drive over with his tractor, hook up, and move the pen to a fresh location.

“Pigs don’t like to be dirty,” he explained earnestly, “any more than people do. Feed them grain like a horse, give them plenty of water for washing, and keep them off the dirty ground.”

He went on speaking of the things that were nearest his heart, talking with neither constraint nor pretension, but in a frank, affable manner. He had none of the cruder aspects one might expect in the rural character, revealing a sensitivity to both people and surroundings. Though his frame seemed slight for heavy farm work, his complexion was ruddy and healthy, and he had a lithe, agile way of carrying himself that hinted at untapped reserves of strength.

Next, he pointed out the teams of horses being readied for the horse-drawing contest, and the place where the wrestling matches would be held. One of the largest of the Soakes boys, Roy, had come ‘cross-river to take on Justin Hooke, and though Roy had more weight, Justin was stronger, and sure to win. From the way Worthy spoke, I could see Justin was something of a hero to him, too. Still, he planned to take the pole-shinny competition himself.

“‘Course, it’s better for things if the Harvest Lord wins, but he can’t win everything.”

“The Harvest Lord?” Beth asked, and Worthy explained. This singular honor had been bestowed on Justin Hooke at Agnes Fair seven years before. He had been crowned at Spring Festival, and it was this traditional role he would continue to assume through the weeks of harvest; a pageant was to be held in the Grange hall some weeks hence-the Corn Play, as it was called-where his queen would be crowned. She was called the Corn Maiden, and Sophie Hooke had been chosen for this part.

“Who chose them?” I asked.

“Justin was elected by vote, and he chose Sophie himself,” Worthy said.

“Oh, look!” Beth had stopped to admire a collection of ivory jewelry on display at a booth. She picked up a pair of earrings and held them to her ears. “Soup bones,” Worthy laughed. The pieces-brooches, rings, and the like-were made locally, carved and engraved from odd pieces of bone. They were worked in the elaborate scrimshaw fashion of the old whaling sailors, and the ivory-like patina came from patient sanding and waxing.

By now we had made a complete circuit of the fair and found ourselves back where we had started. Beth leaned on the jewelry booth counter to pick a stone from her shoe. “Listen,” she said, “I’m about done in. Why don’t I get the picnic hamper and find the Dodds? We can meet under that big tree and see the matches from there.”

“Maybe Kate would like to watch from the platform with the other girls,” Worthy said, pointing out a wooden structure at the side of the field where the Corn Maiden and her court would be seated for the events. Kate accepted, though she remained silent as Beth invited Worthy to picnic with us. When I had got the hamper from the car trunk and Beth had reminded me not to forget Kate’s Medihaler in the glove compartment, she went to find the Dodds.

“Mr. Constantine,” Worthy said. “I’d like to take Kate to see King the Pig, if it’s all right with you. He’s sure to get a blue ribbon.” He pushed back the wedge of blue-black hair that kept falling across his eyes, and waited politely for my answer.

I said I supposed that even a Kate could look at a King, so long as she wasn’t late for lunch. I watched them go off, then went back to the jewelry booth and purchased the bone earrings Beth had admired.

Nearby, the trunk of the Oldsmobile was still open, and Old Man Soakes appeared to be doing a brisk if sub-rosa trade in the decoy business. One farmer after another stole up to slip him some money and carry off not only a canvas duck but a pint of home-brew as well.

Not far from Soakes sat a group of old men making designs from strips of cornhusks, braiding them into simple but elegant figures, some like pinwheels, others like fans or stars or helixes, still others whose shapes were the product of fancy. I took my sketchbook from my case and my pen from my pocket, and began drawing. One of the men looked up; I asked what they were making.

“Decorations for Harvest Home,” he replied; “for good luck.”

“Aye, good luck,” said a dry voice. It was the bell ringer, Amys Penrose, chewing on a straw, sourly watching the men weaving. “They say the devil makes work for idle hands, so if you fellers can’t find the devil one way you’ll find him another. Me, I’d spend the rest of my days loafin’, if I could.”

“Ain’t got too many left, have you, Amys?” asked one of the gentlemen, winking at his cronies.

Amys tickled his ear with the tip of the straw and thought a moment. “Well,” he said finally, “and if I don’t, I wouldn’t give up what’s left of ‘em to be about such damn foolishness. Look there, will you.”

Some farmers went by leading a sheep on a rope. Missy Penrose suddenly appeared from the crowd, put her doll aside, dropped to her knees, and threw her arms around the animal’s neck. The little bronze bell tinkled as she buried her head in its woolly pelt, while passing mothers smiled and turned to their offspring. The bell ringer made a shredded sort of sound in his throat, then spat.

“Don’t be so irksome all the time, Amys,” one of the old men chided, his fingers working nimbly with the straw in his lap. “Content yourself with the space the Reverend Buxley’s reserved for you in his churchyard.”

“Aaarch.” Amys spat again. “Don’t tell me them cheap boxes the church totes us off in ain’t goin’ straight to worms before year’s end. Lookit young McCutcheon-don’t you just know them worms is already eat up half that coffin and all of Loren.”

“Bury the dead,” said one of the men, nodding philosophically. The group worked in silence for a time, and Amys stood hunched against the tree trunk, toying with his straw. I continued with my pen, sketching one face after another, and several pairs of hands.

“Who’s it to be today, do you reckon?” one of the gentlemen asked after a time.

“Talk among the ladies allows it’s bound t’be Jim Minerva,” another responded.

“Still, it’s hard to say,” a third put in.

“Fine fellow, young Minerva,” said the first. “Father’s a good farmer, got a new barn, Jim’s got growin’ brothers to help out. Couldn’t go wrong there.”

“Some of Fred’s bad luck might have rubbed off on the boy,” the second replied.

“Luck’s luck,” Amys observed dourly, “which is what folks around here need the most of.”

While this mystifying conversation proceeded, I had turned my attention to Missy’s doll, making several quick sketches of its incredible appearance. Her mother pulled her aside as Jack Stump reappeared on his rig, banging a kitchen spoon against the row of kettles and offering jovial nods right and left as he doffed his hat. In his wake came an excited group of women, Irene Tatum among them, proudly showing off a blue satin ribbon with a rosette attached. “Whatcha say, ladies,” Jack greeted them. “Whatcha say, Irene Tatum? Congratulations are in order, yes? That’s a swell sow you got there. Chinee Polack, ain’t she?”

Mrs. Tatum gave a rowdy laugh. “It’s a Poland China, Jack Stump, and it’s a he, not a she. Can’t you tell the difference?”

“He’s don’t have tits.”

“You’re right there, Jack. Tits on a boar hog is ‘bout as useful as you are. You know where Poland is, Jack Stump?”

The peddler scratched thoughtfully, hair, beard, armpits.

“Poland’s north of It’ly, ain’t it? And China’s due east, 1 reckon. That what Marco Polo discovered.”

A red face appeared among the onlookers. “Marco Polo’s the one sailed around the world, ain’t he?” asked one of the Soakes brothers.

“You better get yourself back in school, boy,” Jack called. “This here Marco Polo’s the one fought the heathen and went into China and discovered spaghetti.”

“China?” said Edna Jones. “I always thought spaghetti’s Eyetalian.”

“‘Course it’s Italian, you bewitching creature.” Like a magician, Jack produced a flowered scarf from a drawer and flourished it in her face. “Marco Polo found it growin’ in China over the sea and he brought back some seeds and planted them in Rome and that’s why spaghetti’s Eyetalian. Listen, Doris Duke’s got spaghetti plantations all over Honolulu.”

“Peddler, you’re an ignorant fool!” Old Man Soakes had loomed from beside the Oldsmobile, looking dangerous. “You never been to school, you can’t even write your name. Why don’t you shut your mouth before someone shuts it for you? Spaghetti’s nothin’ but flour-and-water paste!”

For a moment I thought Jack would be forced to retreat from this spate of fury, but, taking heart from the crowd, he held his ground, setting up his pop-bottle box and stepping onto it. Snatching open a drawer on his rig, he flashed a bright chrome gadget.

“Whatcha say, ladies, lookee here what I got for you, the finest little kitchen helper in the world, garnteed to do twelve — count ‘em, twelve-diff’rent household jobs, and all for the price of sixty-nine cents, a fair price which goes with the day.”

Tamar Penrose stood listening to the spiel, holding the child Missy in front of her. During Jack’s come-on, I had been made aware of the postmistress, and I took the opportunity to assess her evident charms.

Scarcely what would be termed a beauty, Tamar Penrose had good skin and a head of rioting dark hair. She was taller than most of the women about her, with a full, firm body, wide hips, but a narrow waist. She held herself in a lazy, though erect posture, so her breasts strained under the bright print of her dress, showing her nipples to provocative effect. Her lips were very red against the pale skin, and when her hands moved on the child’s shoulders at her waist, I saw that the fingernails were lacquered a matching color. And though I never caught her looking directly at me, still I had the feeling she was observing me. As for the child, her pale eyes were now focused on a farmer standing close by, sharpening a sickle on a handstone.

Jack’s audience having thinned appreciably, I stepped over to the corner of his cart just as Old Man Soakes came striding up. He grasped Jack by his coat lapels, whisked him around to the back of the cart, and spoke in a rough, angry voice.

“I wasn’t doin’ nothin,” I heard Jack protest feebly.

“Never mind what you wasn’t doin’,” Soakes replied, “stay out of them woods. You’ve had your warnin’.” He strode back to his place at the rear of the Oldsmobile while Jack reappeared, his fingers shaking as he adjusted his jacket.

“Damned grizzly is what he is,” he muttered, shooting a look from the corner of his eye. “Them woods ain’t private property, y’ know.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand.

“What happened in there this morning, Jack?” I asked. He stopped his hand and looked at me closely, as though deciding whether or not to take me into his confidence.

“As strange a thing as I ever hope to see,” he said after a moment, his eye on the bent back at the Oldsmobile trunk. “And I seen it with these here two eyes, which is as good as they come. Twenty-twenty vision, I got-”

“But what happened?” I persisted. “What did you see?”

“I seen a ghost,” he whispered.

I stepped closer to catch his every word. “What sort of ghost?”

“A ghost that once was dead, but now’s come alive. A living ghost, as sure as I stand here. And it was screamin’.” He ducked another look at Old Man Soakes who accepted some money from a passer-by in exchange for a bottle and then slammed the trunk lid with a loud crash. Straightening, the man cast another baleful glance in our direction.

“Later,” Jack whispered; he left me standing by the cart and quickly hopped over to the farmer who was sharpening his sickle with the handstone.

“Whatcha say, Will Jones, whatcha say,” he began, flicking a glance to where Old Man Soakes stood at the edge of the crowd, still watching. Assuming an air of nonchalance, Jack reached for the sickle and tested its edge with his thumb. “Lemme tellya, Will,” he said to the farmer, “you can sharpen up that there sickle a lot faster on a wheel.”

“Haven’t got one,” the farmer replied.

“Come along, I got one on my rig.” Jack brought the farmer back to the rig, moving me aside to reveal under a flap a grindstone clamped to a piece of the cart frame. Instructing the farmer to turn the handle, he laid the blade to the wheel and proceeded to grind the edge. Sparks flew up like meteors, and the peddler cocked his head this way and that, ostensibly checking the angle, but I could see he had an eye on the departing back of Old Man Soakes. The child Missy left her mother’s side and slowly approached, watching the shower of sparks shooting into the air.

“Missy,” Tamar Penrose called insistently, but the child paid no attention as Jack put his thumb to the blade to test it. “Hot damn, now that’s sharp, Will.” The blade glistened like a silver crescent.

“Pretty good,” the farmer agreed.

“Good, hell! It’s perfect! There y’are, Will, sharp as a dime and no charge.” He handed over the implement, leaped onto the saddle of his rig, and started off.

“Jack,” I called, hoping for the rest of his story, but he only shook his head and, without a backward look, pedaled away into the crowd.

When Tamar came to take Missy’s hand, the child hung back for an instant, her bleak eye lingering on the gleaming sickle blade in Will Jones’s hand. Turning, her look fell on me; she gazed for a long silent moment, and I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle as she continued to stare, her body a trifle stiff, her mouth slack. Then she permitted herself to be led away.

I stood alone for a moment, trying to examine the sensation I had felt, a fugitive feeling I could scarcely define. I moved into the crowd, my eye on the tree where Beth was already laying out the picnic things. Though I saw Beth plainly, it was the child’s face that hovered before me; and it was perhaps for this reason alone that I forgot to take Kate’s Medihaler from the glove compartment of the car.

7

“An elegant repast, my dear,” Professor Dodd said to Beth, wiping his lips with one of the checkered napkins. “You have found the way to my heart. Now if you’re truly good, Margaret will give you her recipe for old New England succotash. Most people use salt pork, but she makes it the old Indian way.”

“How did they do it?”

“They baked a dog with it.”

“Oh, Robert, really, the Constantines aren’t going to believe a thing you tell them if you keep that up.” Maggie Dodd took a cigar from Robert’s breast pocket, rolled it between her palms, clipped the end, and held the match while he lighted it.

“I assure you the Indians considered it a great delicacy,” Robert continued. Having finished our picnic lunch, we were sitting under the tree-Robert Dodd in a lawn chair, Worthy Pettinger close to Kate-eating Maggie’s chocolate mousse. Beth, who was wearing my gift of the bone earrings, stretched and lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.

“It’s hard to believe places like this exist anymore. It seems like a-” She groped for the word.

“Throwback,” Maggie supplied.

“No such thing,” said Robert.

“I mean someone found it and forgot to throw it back.”

“Margaret’s always making jokes at the village’s expense,” Robert said.

I was quick to recognize the flash of intimate response between the couple as Maggie leaned and took Robert’s napkin, shaking off the crumbs and folding it. Watching them, I felt we truly had found friends. To me, Maggie personified that thing I had been trying to express to myself about the villagers, an air of simple, placid grace, with her unmade-up features, her still-clear skin and eyes, her neatly coiffed hair whose style I was sure had not changed since she was a young woman. Her voice was low and serene, with a kind of easy, humorous lilt to it: an imperturbable woman.

“What Robert means,” she went on, “is just what you’re trying to say: there’s a sort of timelessness about Cornwall Coombe that often strikes outsiders-or even newcomers-as unusual.”

Beth lighted a cigarette and blew smoke through her nose. “What does it mean-Coombe?”

“It’s an English word-Celtic, actually,” Robert explained. “Means a valley or a sort of hollow. I suppose it implies a certain remoteness, which we are given to hereabouts. Margaret’s partially correct: there are a number of ‘throwbacks’ around here, like certain of the names which have an ancient and venerable history. Take the Lost Whistle Bridge, for instance, which is a corruption of ‘Lostwithiel,’ one of the towns in old Cornwall.” He pointed his cigar to the house next to the post office. “And when Gwydeon Penrose built that house over there, he named it Penzance House, but it’s come down to us as ‘Penance’ House.”

The horse-drawing contests had begun, and presently the Widow Fortune appeared with some friends, seating herself at a table under a nearby tree. The old lady set down her piece-bag, her splint basket, and her black leather valise, then arranged her skirts and shears while others drew around her and opened various baskets and hampers from which they produced an array of provender. Another lady came with a tall glass of tea, holding it while the Widow reached in her basket and broke off a sprig of mint, crushed it, and put it in the tea.

“Say hello to the Widow, dear,” Maggie prompted Robert.

“How do, Widow,” Robert called, and she called back, putting her tea aside as one of the ladies offered her an ear of corn in a napkin.

Maggie laughed. “Look how she takes that corn off the cob. My teeth wouldn’t stand for it. Isn’t it amazing how she keeps her faculties? And her energies. You’ll see-after her lunch she’ll sit there and quilt the whole afternoon, she and Mrs. Brucie and Mrs. Zalmon.”

“A quilting bee?” Beth asked.

“Quilting’s become fashionable everywhere these days, but it’s never stopped in the Coombe. Our ladies can turn out a dozen quilts a month.”

“Patchwork quilts bring a lot of money down in New York,” Beth said speculatively.

Out on the field, Fred Minerva had hitched his team to a skid with wooden runners like a sled. Worthy explained that this was called a stoneboat, onto which sacks of sand had been loaded. Deftly manipulating the reins, Fred encouraged his horses to pull the stoneboat along the turf, and at a certain point he unhitched his team and another took his place. The various pairs of horses were decked out in bell-laden harness, and I saw that Justin’s team had little corn rosettes stuck up behind the blinders.

I turned back to Robert. “The thing I don’t understand is how, in a day of modern technology and machinery, farmers still continue to use a horse and plow in place of tractors.”

“They don’t believe in tractors,” Maggie said.

Worthy sat up, attentive to the conversation, as Robert said, “The farmers hereabouts discovered long ago what farmers elsewhere are just coming to realize. There’s a good deal of work on a farm that can be done more cheaply by animal power than by gasoline. And your seed will go in early, before you can use a tractor on the wet ground.”

“Maybe you lose a little time at early planting, Professor,” Worthy put in, “but in the long run you make it up. And I’ll bet if I hitched my tractor onto that skid I could move it farther and faster than all those horses put together.”

“Hot, hot, hot. Never saw a fair day so hot.” It was the redoubtable Mrs. Buxley, the parson’s wife, accompanied by her husband. Wearing a flyaway hat and billowing chiffon, like a four-masted schooner in a high gale she descended upon us. She blew out her cheeks and lowered her bottom into one of the chairs Mr. Buxley had brought along. “Can’t remember a fair day hot as this, not since-James, can’t you bring your chair closer and join us? — the year of the last great flood. That was the year you and Robert came to us, wasn’t it, Maggie? Remember, Robert?”

“I remember.” Robert laughed shortly.

“Gracious, that was fourteen years now, hardly seems possible.” She lavished a smile on Beth. “And for you, this will be your first. We don’t see you in church-do we, James?”

Mr. Buxley’s reply was inaudible. Mrs. Buxley wrinkled her brow, her smile becoming one of infinite patience. “And we miss seeing your little girl for Sunday School-isn’t that so, James? You know that I take the Sunday School myself, James has so much work composing his sermons. You like our church, Ned? I may call you Ned? Allow me to see some of your work, may I?”

Her insistent hand slipped my sketchbook from my lap and began leafing through it. “Why, there’s Amys Penrose to the life. And old Mr. Huie! And those hands-you are talented, Ned. Your husband’s very talented, Mrs. Constantine.” She displayed the page for all to see.

“What are those things?” Beth pointed to several drawings of the corn designs the men were weaving.

Mr. Buxley spoke up for the first time. “They’re harvest symbols. Supposed to bring good luck. You’ll see them on almost every door and chimney in town for the next month.”

“And look how he’s captured that doll,” Mrs. Buxley chimed in. “Ned, wherever did you find it?”

I explained it belonged to Missy, the postmistress’s child.

“Of course. What do they call it, Robert-a ‘gaga’?”

“A corn doll? Yes, a gaga.”

“Gaga? What does that mean?” Beth asked.

“Vaguely, it’s Indian for ‘fun’ or ‘funny.’ Just a child’s plaything.”

“I should think, it’d keep a child awake at night.”

Mrs. Buxley laughed. “One of our little traditions. You’re bound to think us positively heathenish hereabouts-isn’t that so, James?”

“We’ve had our fill of progress,” Beth said.

“Coming from the city and all, yes-they seem to progress right into damnation down there, don’t they? I see you’re wearing some of our earrings-pretty, aren’t they? Imagine, from soup bones. Clever, what our carvers can do. Roger was the best carver, wasn’t he, James? James! Roger Penrose? The best carver? That brooch the Widow wears on Sundays-Roger carved that, as I recall. Look at those strong horses-”

Out on the field, the horse-drawing contests continued. When each team had pulled the skid as far as it could, it was unhooked and another was put in place, and so on. After each round, more sacks of sand were added to the load, which became increasingly difficult to pull.

It came Justin Hooke’s turn again; his horses strained under the burden, their flanks streaming, their forelegs buckling. Unlike the others, Justin did not use a whip, but coaxed the animals ahead by manipulating the reins and calling to them. The stoneboat moved a good distance, and a cheer went up among the spectators. Mr. Deming, the chief elder, after measuring out the last distance, pronounced Justin the winner.

As the teams were withdrawn from the field, the sound of Worthy’s tractor was heard. Looking around, I saw that he had vanished, and now his head appeared over the crowd as he drove the John Deere onto the field. He had hitched chains behind, which he quickly attached to the stoneboat, then resumed his seat and began throwing levers. The front end of the tractor nosed up in the air and the tracks dug into the ground, then, obtaining purchase, began to slide the load. Shifting quickly, the boy skillfully sent the tractor forward, and when he had got up speed the stoneboat went jouncing over the grass, the crowd parting and closing behind until stoneboat, tractor, and driver were lost from view.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Buxley muttered, “Mr. Deming’s not going to like that at all. See how the grass is all chewed up. Worthy ought to know better. I hope there won’t be trouble again. James-?” She gave her husband a piercing look. Mr. Buxley opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and suddenly remembered his socks needed pulling up. Mrs. Buxley rose. “There’s the Widow, James. We must go and say hello. See you in church.” She waggled her fingers and-the Reverend Mr. Buxley trailing after with the chairs-she went to greet the Widow Fortune.

When they had gone, Robert chuckled and shook his head. “Leave it to Worthy to rile things up around here. You won’t get him set in his ways, not while he’s got that tractor.”

Worthy came back to take Kate to the platform for the wrestling matches, and since we had a good view from our picnic spot, the Dodds, Beth, and I remained under the tree. The Widow Fortune, carrying her own chair, came and set it down close by, adjusting her things around her.

“Why does a tractor stir up such consternation?” I asked Robert.

“You get plenty of resistance around here to new ways. I suppose Cornwall Coombe’s always been a world unto itself.” He paused briefly while Maggie held a match for him to relight his cigar.

“Look,” she said when she was done, “here comes Justin onto the field.” Shading her eyes, she described to Robert the action that preceded the wrestling matches. Roy Soakes shuffled out onto the turf, where he took off his shirt and stood around looking surly and sweaty, rubbing the palms of his hands on his jeans. There was a pause, then a tumultuous shout went up. Justin Hooke appeared, stripped to the waist, looking more gigantic than ever as he surveyed his opponent. Raising his arms in salute to the crowd, he advanced with long, rapid strides to the platform, where he bowed to Sophie and all the girls, then returned to the field and shook hands with his opponent. The referee spoke to them, stepped back, and the bout began.

It was wrestling of an order I had never seen before, the good old-fashioned country kind, with no holds barred. Whenever Soakes got the upper hand, he received no encouragement from the crowd, though his father and brothers suggested mightily, “Kill the guy!” “Break his arm, brain him, Roy!” And for all that Roy had weight on his side, Justin’s strength carried the first round, then the second, then the third. When at last Tobacco City’s finest went limping from the field, Old Man Soakes angrily shoved another of his offspring out in his place, and, after taking off his shirt, he faced Justin. Without waiting, the newest opponent shot out his foot, tripped Justin up, and dropped on top of him. There were boos and catcalls at such dirty tactics, and Jack Stump darted out on the field to protest to the referee, but Old Man Soakes came roaring after him, seized him by the collar, and tossed him back into the crowd.

Even with the unfair advantage, it was no contest. Heaving himself up, Justin threw Soakes to the side, fell on him, and put a half-Nelson around Soakes’s neck until his eyes rolled up. Then he released him and stepped away. As Soakes got to his feet, Justin whirled and gracefully planted a well-placed kick on his backside, which sent him sprawling. Amid cheers and laughter, Justin left the fray.

Justin took a towel from Worthy and wiped himself down, then went to the platform where he talked with Sophie and the girls, waiting for the next event to begin. At one point, he stooped and cordially spoke a few words to Kate, who was seated on the steps. When the whistle blew, announcing the next contest, he handed her his towel, then ran lightly onto the field again, accompanied by Worthy and half a dozen other young men. It was time for the pole-shinny.

The referee held up his hand and the first contestant readied himself at the base of the pole, testing its surface with his palms until the whistle blew and up he went. He touched the top, then slid down, and Jimmy Minerva took his position while the referee called out the time from his stopwatch. He signaled again, and Jim went up and came down. Third to go was Justin, moving with dexterity for a man of his height and weight, quickly arriving at the top, where he paused briefly, then slid down. Applause followed the announcement that his time had beaten the first two. On the platform, Sophie and her girls had risen, also Kate, who was standing on the steps, caught in the excitement of the moment as Worthy addressed himself to the pole. He spat on his palms, rubbed them together, and grasped the wooden shaft, waiting, his knees bent so they almost touched the ground. Hearing the whistle, he came up out of his crouch in a slick leap and, hand over hand, feet gripping, he went up like an agile monkey to tap the top of the post.

He waited, grinning down at the crowd, until the referee called out the time, well under Justin’s. Holding on with one hand, he waved, and I saw Kate waving back at him excitedly. He did not come down immediately but, grasping the tip of the pole with both hands, he began to sway with it back and forth. Mr. Deming hurried out on the field gesticulating, while the crowd murmured excitedly, watching Worthy’s body describe an ever-widening arc against the sky. Kate rose from the steps, staring wide-eyed, fearing for his safety.

Using the pole as a fulcrum, the boy extended his body outward in a horizontal position. Suddenly there came a single, loud report, almost like a pistol shot. Dropping to the vertical again, Worthy began sliding down, but when he had got less than halfway another cracking sound was heard as the pole continued to split. Without looking below, he flung himself outward in a graceful movement, and plunged to the turf. I was certain he must be hurt, but in another moment Justin had him on his feet, dazed but laughing and shaking his head. He was hoisted aloft and borne around the field, until Mr. Deming stepped up and ordered them all off. Glancing over at Kate to catch her reaction, I saw only the back of Sophie’s dress as she bent above a crumpled form on the steps. I started at a half-run, then stopped as the Widow Fortune seized my hand.

“No,” she said, pointing to the valise beside her chair. “The black bag-bring it!” She hurried toward the platform while, unnoticed by the others under the tree, I snatched up the black bag and dashed after her.

Kate lay collapsed against the steps, and when I arrived Sophie was cradling her in her arms while the Widow leaned over her, listening to her heart. Kate’s face had gone livid; the blue veins in her forehead bulged and throbbed. The eyes were wide and glassy in the way I had seen so many times that summer, and her skin was flooded with perspiration. Great gasping noises issued from her throat as she fought for air; her fingers clutched at her neck as though to tear away the invisible hands that were strangling her.

“A doctor-” I looked wildly around. The Widow shook her head, fumbled open the valise, located a bottle, and pulled the cork. Holding the glass neck to Kate’s mouth, she put several drops of liquid between the parted lips, then stroked the neck muscles until the drops had been swallowed. She repeated the operation, and in a moment the terrible gasping sounds subsided, to be replaced by a dry rattle. Then the chest became almost motionless, and Kate’s breathing slowed. I seized her wrist and tried to find her pulse; there was none.

As the crowd came toward the platform, the Widow motioned for me to carry Kate into a nearby tent, where I laid her on a table and again tried to find her pulse, cursing myself for having forgotten the Medihaler. I dropped her limp wrist, raced from the tent, and thrust my way through the figures thronging the platform where the elders were making a presentation to Justin’s winning team of horses. Catching sight of Beth, I shouted “Kate!” and jerked my head toward the tent, then pushed on through the crowd. I found the Medihaler in the car, and hurried back. Expecting the worst, I tore aside the tent flap to discover Beth, Sophie, and the Widow grouped around the table where I had left Kate in a paroxysm of agony. I stopped in my tracks at the sight that now greeted me. Kate was sitting up, her hands in her lap, listening as the Widow spoke to her. Beth gave me a wild look; we knew from experience that the attacks usually lasted from an hour to two or three days, but here was our daughter breathing easily if feebly.

I started forward, the Medihaler in my outstretched hand, Beth drew me beside her and I put an arm around her, holding her close, not daring to speak. The Widow stood behind Kate, leaning slightly forward, her head even with the girl’s, her lips close to her ear. The tips of the ancient fingers were working at the cords of Kate’s neck, then at her temples, and as she worked she spoke in low, soothing tones. I felt Beth’s hand fumbling for mine; I took it and held it hard, observing the old woman’s careful but firm ministrations, the movements of her large womanly hands, her intent, grave expression, and I was flooded by a sense of relief and release, relief for Kate’s recovery, release from my own guilt.

Sophie came over to us and, assuring us that all would be well, took us outside the tent. Maggie Dodd was there with Justin Hooke, and together we waited. Then, silent, stricken-looking, Worthy Pettinger joined us. From inside we heard the Widow’s gentle, yet insistent alto voice.

Justin’s head turned and our eyes met. Then he nodded, once, twice. He did not speak, but I could tell he meant us to know what Sophie had already voiced: all would be well.

Shortly we heard Kate’s husky laugh. “All right now?” the Widow asked; there was a sound of assent, and in a moment the flap was raised and Kate appeared, looking pale and shaken. Beth rushed to embrace her; then she and Sophie led her away. With another look, Justin followed with Worthy. The Widow, who had been watching, bit her lip in contemplation, clasping and unclasping her fingers across her apron front, then went back into the tent and reappeared with her black valise.

I remembered how Kate’s attacks would seemingly abate for a time, only to return with increased vigor, and I wondered if this was not merely one of those stages. The old woman seemed to read my mind, for she rested her hand on my arm and exerted a firm pressure, as though to buoy up my spirits.

“She’ll be all right now. Don’t worry yourself, and tell your wife not to worry. And whatever you do, don’t fuss the child. Act as though nothing happened.” Brushing aside my expressions of thanks, she employed the shears hanging at her waist to snip an errant thread from the cuff of her sleeve; then, beaming behind her spectacles, she patted my cheek. When she had accepted Maggie’s arm and permitted herself to be led away, I remained staring at the useless Medihaler in my hand, then absently slipped it into my pocket and followed after the others, wondering how the old woman had effected a cure at once so swift and so miraculous. And though I did not realize it then, it was not the last time the Widow Fortune was to rescue Kate, to rescue Beth, and to alter all our lives.

8

An hour later, it was as if nothing untoward had occurred. Kate went off with Worthy again, while Beth, calm now, talked with the Dodds. The Widow had removed her chair to its former spot under the other tree, and I could see by her impatient gestures how she dismissed among the circle of ladies grouped around her all talk of the earlier incident. With the heat, the women had drawn well into the shade of the overhead branches, digesting their lunch, as well as such tidbits of gossip as still remained unconsumed from the morning’s repast.

Though I could not explain it, I felt that a great weight had been lifted from me, and that the threatening fact of Kate’s illness had suddenly dissolved; the occasional looks the Widow Fortune directed to me as she conversed only served to substantiate this feeling.

Leaving Maggie and Robert engaged with Beth, and taking my sketchbook, I made myself inconspicuous while I ambled closer to the Widow’s group, where I uncapped my pen and began to sketch the group of ladies putting their heads together and talking. The Widow took out her glasses and inspected the lenses for lint, then put them on. “Mrs. Zee, I believe we might bring out our quilts now.” She smoothed down her apron while the other ladies drew their chairs closer and took quilts from their baskets. The complacent bleat of a sheep rose in the torpid air as it stood patiently in a wooden tub while some men washed it. Overhead, the sun nickered through the green canopy of leaves, glinting on the rims of the Widow’s spectacles, the thimble on her finger, and her shears as she scissored out a piece of bright cloth and pinned it to her quilt.

“Wa’n’t Justin the marvel today?” Mrs. Brucie said. Mrs. Zalmon put her hand to her breast. “I’ve never seen such a handsome Harvest Lord.”

“Worthy Pettinger’d be obliged if he didn’t try to make such mischief,” Mrs. Green said.

“Such jackanapes tricks,” Mrs. Zalmon said.

“Don’t it put you in mind of somethin’?” Mrs. Brucie said.

“It surely does!” Irene Tatum pulled up a chair and flopped. She had a piece of newspaper, which she pleated, and began fanning herself. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Worthy’s gone off his rocker just like the bad one.” A chain of looks went around the circle like small, silent explosions.

“Hush, now,” the Widow Fortune ventured gently.

“I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again; she was a bad one.” Irene Tatum’s tongue was sharp, as if she kept it whetted on a stone, ready to carve on all occasions.

“A bad apple spoils the barrel,” said Mrs. Green.

“Went bad long before Agnes Fair,” said Mrs. Brucie.

“We gave her honors and she flaunted them in our faces,” said Irene Tatum.

“Hush, now, Irene.” The Widow’s needle flashed. “‘The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred…’ Some things are best not spoken of. Leave her in peace.”

“Never find no peace, Grace Everdeen,” declared Irene hotly.

“Goodnight nurse!” the Widow exclaimed, then deftly changed the subject. “I never saw such a leap as Worthy made. A daredevil is what he is.”

Mrs. Brucie shook her head. “Devil, yes. The boy holds contrary notions. Let one get ideas, and they’ll all get them, and then where are you? On the verge, on the pure and simple verge. Widow, oughtn’t you to talk to the boy?”

“Worthy?” The Widow looked surprised. “Why, Worthy’s nice as pie. And a good boy, I’ll be bound.” She drew out a length of cotton and rethreaded her needle.

“Well,” Mrs. Green said firmly, “if anyone’s to be chose, it’s sure to be Jim Minerva, mark my word. I’ll put my corn and stock to wager.”

Though I found the conversation puzzling, wondering who was to be chosen and for what purpose, and by what means, I was forced to smile at the agreeable circle.

“Dear sakes,” the Widow said, “if that sheep’s not positively snowy.” The men had rinsed the animal’s coat, and one of them lifted it from the tub and set it on its feet to dry in the sun; another retied the bell around its neck. While the women continued together, sewing and gossiping in their group, the unoccupied men likewise drew off together, meditatively picking their teeth, an easy lackadaisical drone to their voices, their attention occasionally directed to the sheep’s bell, whose soft tinkle hung in the air as the washers brushed the white woolly coat, none of them speaking, all of them seeming to be waiting.

A little distance away, Missy Penrose stood stock-still, idly staring up at the sky where a silvery jet traced a white contrail across the blue. The Widow called out to a passerby, “Miss Clapp, take her out o’ the sun. Out o’ the sun, I say. It’s too hot. She’ll never last till they’re ready.” Miss Clapp brought the child under the tree, where the Widow took her on her lap. She rummaged in her piece-bag, produced a length of twine which she tied in a loop, and began showing Missy how to do cat’s cradle. The old lady seemed at pains to amuse the child, and when they had played for a time, she set Missy on the grass and resumed her stitching.

Mrs. Green looked up at the church clock. “Soon it’ll be time.”

“Soon,” said Mrs. Brucie.

I felt a touch on my shoulder, and turned to find Beth beside me, watching me sketch. She smiled, then walked across the grass and circled the tree until she stood behind the Widow, where she looked down at her work.

“It’s a beautiful quilt.”

The Widow smiled up at her. “Bit o’ fancywork. A way to pass the time.”

“Why, it’s Noah and the Ark.”

“Aye, dear, it’s only lackin’ two giraffes and the dove.”

“How long does it take to make one like that?” Beth asked.

“Depends. Four or five of us can finish this off before the moon goes a full quarter. What you ought to do, dear, is try a bit of fancywork yourself. Everyone in these parts sews. Set a spell, dear. You start savin’ your hand-me-downs and worn-outs, you’ll have enough to begin quilting right off. Never throw nothin’ away, that’s what my granny used to say.”

I smiled to myself; the idea appealed to Beth, I could tell.

“Here, dear, let me thread up a needle,” Mrs. Zalmon said. “Mrs. Brucie, pick out a patch there, can you? See-you just pin it on, then it’s ready to be stitched.”

Beth glanced over at me with a smile, her expression clearly saying, My God, look at me-I’m in a sewing circle.

Later it cooled slightly, the shadows began to lengthen as the sun dropped, and the Common settled into somnolence. The air was still and heavy and smelled faintly sour, the odor of weeds or grass cuttings. The pennants hung limp and tired on the booths. No traffic passed, no voices called, no dogs barked. All was silence.

I went across the roadway in the direction of Penance House, where I had seen some of the men disappearing. Wondering what had taken them there, I walked past the post office, and when I heard low voices from behind the barn next door, I went to investigate. Abruptly the voices stopped. In the stillness, I could feel the same prickling at the base of my neck I had felt that morning, and a lifting of the hairs along my forearms. An uncanny feeling, telling me something was about to happen. I took several steps toward the barn, then halted, riveted by a sound I instantly recognized, climbing to a terrible pitch, a wild cry, rising upward and outward as though from the heart of a bell, to float, then to die in the air, trailing away to nothingness. A pair of swallows, alarmed, took abrupt flight from the eaves of the barn, arcing out against the sky, dipping and swooping past my vision. I rounded the corner of the barn and was confronted by a baffling semicircle of backs. No one turned. Why so still, these men and boys, why so grave, so silent?

Then I saw the child, and thought at first she must be hemorrhaging, so red were her arms. I saw Will Jones’s simple farmer’s face looking at me. In hat and overalls, he stood meekly in the center of the circle, the handle of his sickle clasped loosely in one hand, the sharp silver crescent gone red. At his feet lay the felled sheep; below the red wool its thin legs still jerked. The child knelt in the dust, busily engaged as she gazed dreamily down at the red mass of viscera she held in her palms, her arms red to the elbows.

She raised her blank face and, as though waking from a dream, peered around the circle of men stolidly looking upon her and upon the red maw of the sheep’s cleaved belly and upon the still-palpitating entrails she tenderly cupped in her hands. Dripping red, the glossy tubular glands and bulgy membranes slid about and slowly slipped through her splayed fingers and fell back into the parted red cavity beneath them. Never removing her eyes from her hands, she raised them palms upward before her, toward the sky, their redness trembling against the blue. There was no sound, only the dry rattle of the watchers’ breath trapped in their throats; one man coughed, another blew his nose into a bandanna. Still the red hands remained outstretched; as if in a trance, the child rose and began a slow circuit, her eyes glazed, uttering not a word as she moved around the circle of younger men.

Stiffly she walked past young Lyman Jones, past the Tatum boys, past Merle Penrose, past several others, until she stood before Jim Minerva. A faint sign of recognition appeared in her face, a perceptible widening of the eyes, a murmur in the throat. Her hands moved slightly as if to touch him; then she passed on in her dream and in her dream stopped again, reaching out her hands and laying their redness against the cheeks of Worthy Pettinger.

A sigh, a murmur; stillness. The whir of insect wings.

When she took the hands away, a replica of each palm lay upon Worthy’s flesh, and as she slowly turned, she dropped her hands almost to her sides; not quite, for in her dream something told her to hold them away from her dress. Some of the men gathered closer to Worthy-pale now around his bloody marks-and thumped him on the shoulders, congratulating him, while others dragged the sheep aside, leaving a smeared trail of red upon the brindled ground. Several men lit up their pipes, scratching blue-tip matches on the seats of their overalls, exchanging nods and low remarks. Out on the street a car backfired, jolting me into shocked reality. I looked again, saw dust and straw and blood, heard the dull buzz of flies, the dry hiss as someone took breath in through his teeth, smelled the stench of the animal. The women came running from the Common in pairs and groups, looking at the ring of men, all amazed.

“Did she choose?” they wanted to know. Who? Who was it? Was it Jim? Jim Minerva? “No,” said the men, shaking their heads, moving aside, and “Praise be!” the women cried, seeing the marked boy. They kissed him, hugged him, bore him away, the men following, until there was no one behind the barn except me.

And the gutted sheep.

And Missy Penrose.

Breathing through her mouth, she was making strange, incomprehensible sounds as she stared at the open cavity. “Mnn — mean-um-nmm-” Where all had been red before, now a black liverish-looking bile was running from the rent tissue. She stopped, put her fingers into it, brought them out bloodier, darker, held them against the sky, her body going rigid and beginning a tremulous shaking.

“Mean-um-nmm-mean-’’

Her eyes rolled upward in their sockets; a slight spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth, became a froth. She twitched, jerked, then a stiff arm rose, a red finger pointed at me. A rising breeze caught her hair, lifted it across her eyes; she brushed it away; red appeared on her forehead like a stigma.

I stared back, feeling the same chill again, the same cold sweat. Wind was whipping the grass at her feet. I said nothing. She said nothing. Her eyes were glassy, blank; I knew she could not see me. Yet she saw-something. Then, still pointing, red, she began screaming. I stood frozen in terror. From the Common came the tumult of celebration. No one had seen, no one saw. She was screaming louder than I thought it possible for a child to scream, and, screaming, she pointed.

She stopped. Her arm fell and hung limp, her eyes came into a kind of focus; she stared briefly at the dead sheep, then turned and walked away.

The air began to freshen, the wind to change, and the sky by slight but perceptible degrees to darken, and out on the Common I could see the men standing back as the women rushed to engulf the child, touching and petting her, a murmur sweeping through them, becoming chatter, then acclaim; then, as the child fainted, their voices were suddenly stilled, like birds before a storm.

I went behind the barn and vomited into the grass.