House of Earth (13 page)

“Gaddernit. Don't I talk like a man, Lady?” He lost his temper as he answered her. “Don't I? What in th' devil do I talk like then, if I don't talk like no man?”

And all of the time during the milking of the six cows, their argument went on. “Like a lunkhead. Like an old Star Route nitwit.”

The sound of the wind against the hollow cowshed was loud in their ears. They raised their voices as they talked. The noise of things moving in the wind came to their ears like the flapping of wings. Dry stalks of corn,
higuera
, tumbleweeds, and sticker bushes rattled as they bounced against the boards, as they blew loose from their places and leaped, jumped, sailed, and whistled past the ends of the shed. The world moved around about them. All of the face of nature crept, crawled, wiggled, shook, watched its chance, and then howled away over the grass roots.

The top grasses, stiff stalks of weeds, bushes, brush of the plains, kept their place and held their footing, but seemed to sing and hum and cry, someway, somehow, as the other looser pieces of paper, hay, grass blades, silt, and straw
left in the currents of the air. And to Tike and to Ella May, born and bred, lived and worked, fed and raised, loved and married, right here on these plains, to them, inside them, in their hearts this was a sorrowful season, an old and a dry season, a season of good-bye and parting, a season when all of the things of the plains, the twigs, grasses, hays, flowers, stalks, and the shucks, the things grown of the earth, take leave without further crying, and blow away somewhere to be whipped apart, to be parted and parted again. And the sadness in the high dark clouds and the sadness in the low biting winds was a big enough sorrow and a heavy enough sadness without adding any more onto it by whipping one another with wisecracking words.

In order to be funny above Ella May's scolding, Tike gritted his teeth as he drew the last drop from the tit of his last cow, and he spit down into the manure and straw underfoot and said, “You just wait till I get you back in that house, Miss Lady, I'll show you who's a man.” He half closed his eyes and visioned what sorts of pranks he would play on her, he saw her cornered in the front room behind the lamp, and he imagined already that he heard her screaming and laughing, “Tike. Tike. Yes. I said yes. I said you was one. You're one. You're a man. You're a man. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Donnnn't. You're a man. I take it back. I'll not say you're not one again. Tike. Tike.”

These folks were the folks of nature. They were the son and the daughter of nature and their loud yells, screams, and laughs came from shouting back into the face of all men
and all nature, and their quick minds were as quick as their fast tongues that always yelled down all men, all events, and all of the things of men and nature. They were back in the house again before either one of them spoke. The upper plains folks have fought for room enough out there to talk loud and to yell long-distance, and also to turn quiet and to have room enough to think deep. “Tike, you would just be under my feet and in my way trying to help me fix supper. I think you had better spend your time putting some more newspapers on the wall. I don't want you to cause me to spill this skillet full of hot grease all over myself.”

“Do which an' how?” Tike set his two three-gallon buckets of new warm milk down on the floor. He opened his hand in the air to slap a cat away and said, “I'll knock your head off. You danged old lousy satchel, you!”

“Tike. Tike Hamlin.” There was a fighting, peeved sneer on Ella's face. “What did you call me? I heard you. What did you say to me?” She lifted the hem of her apron to cry over the cookstove. The fumes of the asbestos wick starting to burn got into her eyes. She felt the pain shoot through her nose and head, but felt somehow glad that the fumes caused her face to be wet with tears. “You said you, said, said, that I was an old satchel, and, and, and that you, you would knock my head off! I heard you! I'll throw this kettle full of hot water all over you if you touch me!”

“Talkin' at th' cat.” Tike grinned. “Gosh, dang a-mighty, dern, Lady, you didn't really think that I was gonna knock your head off, did you? Your head?” He hugged her
close up against his dirty overalls and kissed her tears. “Did I fool you, Lady? Haw haw haw. I really had you kneelin', didn't I? Gosh? I got to have this little head to talk to and kiss on. Couldn't knock it off. But I shore did have you squawlin', huh? Hah.”

“Was not crying.”

“Not cryin'? Well, then, could you tell me what all of these here tears is doin' all over your face an' cheeks here?”

She fought away. “Fumes. They caused it. Not anything you said.” She mopped her nose and cheeks and her eyes red and dry with her cooking apron. “Couldn't scare me. Not if you was as high as the moon and as wide as the sections, not if you had teeth like our old horse out there and a tractor motor and two wheat combines down in your guts. You're not so big as all of that. Mister Tike.” She turned her back to work at her cooking. “Go do what I said. Did you hear me? I've got that dishpan in there full of flour paste and that little whisk broom for a brush. Hurry. Run. See how much you can put on before supper. Huh?”

“Ain't.” Tike stood behind her and felt the heat get hotter from the burners. “Ain't not.”

“And why? What? What are you saying? Go on. Don't stand here behind me and heckle me any such a way. Run.”

Tike slid his hand under her arm and felt the nipple of her breast. “Lady.”

“Tike. Your hand is cold. Don't.”

“Lady.”

“Quit. I'll chop your fingers off with this knife. Ohhmm.
Honey. Tike. I just can't stand your cold hands. That's all. Go paste on some wallpaper so the house will be a little speck warmer at least.”

“Lady. I said, Lady.”

“Lady what?”

“Turn around. This way. Gimme a big kiss an' hug.” He felt her muscles up and down her back and squeezed her hips. “You know, Lady, somethin' tells me, Lady, that you're goin' to hafta be a mighty tough lady to see this out.”

“See what out?” She pushed her ear against his chest and her stomach closer to him.

“See this. Just this. All of this.”

“This? What all, say?”

“Oh … Lemme just hug and squeeze you closer to me thisaway, Lady. I feel so good. So good when I feel you close up against me. Keeps me warm.” His head was bowed and his eyelashes touched against the waves of her hair. “All of this whole mess of stuff that I'm in. Stuff. Stuff like you never was in before in your life. Kind of stuff you never did see before. Mean stuff all around everywhere. Stuff I didn't want to hit you with. I didn't want all of my old life to come jumping down and run over you, Lady. I just wanted us to be here, here together like this, longer than all of this stuff takes to come and to go, and I been hoping that I'd be able to keep most of it from hitting you and from hurting you, and from making you any different than what you are right now, and not old and mean and tough like a wild animal, like you see some of the people around, and like I am some
of the time, or something like I feel in me all of the time, partly or mostly.”

“I've not got the least worldly idea of what it is you are trying to say, Mister Man, but your words sound like your sense of all human reason has flew up on the windmill platform to go to sleep for the night. I'm tough, Mister Man. You'll one day find out just how tough I really am. Turn me loose and let me fix supper.”

“We got something bigger than supper to fix.” He blew his breath down into her hair. “Lady.”

“I know we have, Tike.” There were tears in her words as her mouth moved against his shirt. “Got a thousand worries and ten million debts and all kinds of sickness and wrong weather and all of this land to fix. Got to plow and plant more. Got to get a hold of machinery. Groceries. Things to wear. Oil to run us. And we now owe more than we can pay back in thirty years, even if the weather sobers up and the crops come good every season.”

“And you never did have a worry, never did owe a copper red cent in your whole life before, not till you hooked up with this old mean no-good outfit of a Tike Hamlin,” he said.

“Did I not tell you, please, please, please, Tike, not to ever let those words slip your tongue again? What are you about to beef about next, my old rich daddy? Stop. Don't kiss me anymore. I'm walking out. I'll yank this apron here off and I'll be out of that door and gone in two seconds. Just one more word. Just one little breath. Just one. My goodness gracious sakes alive. Goodness, lordness, Mathuzalem
to jigsaw puzzles! God! Quit. Turn me loose. Go away. Get over there and paste those papers on the wall. Put them on about two or three thick, magazines two thick. You put my dress down! Mister, Mister Tike Hambone! Git!”

“Ain't gittin'.”

“You are, too, or I'll whack you in two with this blade. I said get to papering!”

“No use to aim no little ole point of a knife at my guts, Lady. I ain't gittin', ain't budgin' out of my tracks till you tell me somethin'.” He looked her in both eyes. “Tell me you'll pay me off in material.”

“I'll not. Material?”

“Material.”

“I'll pay you off with a glass of water and a toothpick.”

“My kinda material.”

“Me pay? You? How about you doing some of the paying? That paper on that wall will keep your old sore hide just as comfortably heated as it will mine. Why had I ought to be the one to pay you for the work? Say?” She acted hard, but she felt a soft, sandy feeling all through her, like the rainwaters eating away a patch of soil, like a farm washing grain by grain down with the rain, and up again with the dust. “Me pay?”

“No pay”—he shook his head and looked her whole body up and down—“no work.”

“Why me pay?”

“You. I said you. I think you heard me say you.” He held her closer and tighter against him. “See …? Miss Lady?”

“But, but, but … I've not got any money.”

“How sad.”

“Not even fine clothes. Nor even any nice furniture. Nor a good car. Not anything that you would really want.”

“So?”

“Only, only, say, some milk, and some butter, and some eggs, and a little handful of seeds of some kind. Not even a bushel of wheat, Mister. Not even, not even a drink of whiskey. Only some windmill julep, or something like that. I, ah, I, ah, just didn't happen to think to bring my checkbook with me today.” She twisted in a prissy movement and ducked her head as he hugged her.

“Milk an' honey's all right.”

“But I, you see, ah, I sell all of my good milk. I separate it into cream and butterfat. After it goes through the separator there, then all I've got left is old bluejohn skimmed milk. And you're such a high-society businessman that you'd not be at all pleased nor satisfied with my milk after all of the good things have been taken out of it. And, ah, as for honey, I've not got a single bee on this whole farm, that is, none of my own, they come here and suck all of the honey out of all of my nice pretty flowers, and then they fly away,
bbbzzzzzzzzztttt
, like that, and take all of my nice good honey away to somebody else somewhere.” She worked with her ham in the skillet, biscuits in the oven, coffee in the pot.

“Then you swear that so far as you know there ain't a drop of honey on this whole farm.”

“Stack of Bibles. I swear.”

“Well, ah, ah, then. Now, we'll just say, that, ah, as far as you're concerned, there ain't no honey about this place? Not even one little drop. That is, I mean, of your own?”

She answered with her back to him, “Not nary a drop.”

“And as for the milk. Ah, now, you say that you send all of your good cream into town for butterfat and that what you've got left is just old weakly bluejohn thin stuff that you feed to the hogs an' to the chickens? That right?”

“Right as a fox.”

“Well, now. Just what would you say if I was to prove to you that you are telling a great big, big lie, this big? This wide? An' this high an' this long? Wouldn't make you sore, would it?”

“Ohhh. No sir. You see. Sir. I've not been married to this landowner for so very long, sir, and sir, he sir, might sir, well he might not have told me, he might not have shown me, sir, where every little thing is. Possibly there's just oodles and gaboodles of milk and honey here, and butter, too, sir, for all that I would know.”

“I see.”

“I am glad, sir, that you see, sir.”

“Still …” Tike tangled his fingers in the waves of her hair as it fell down from her shoulders. “Still, ahhh, you would like for me to do the common labor of papering your house with the latest newspapers, and you tell me there's not a drop of pay in it for me. Right?”

“Nary a drop.”

“Now. Just wait. Right there. Wait. Ahhh. Now, what
if I go ahead and do this work? Ahh, would you say, then, that you would be willing to pay me a fair and a reasonable share of all of the milk and all of the honey that's not sent into town, I mean, all that is still left here?”

“All that is left?”