Plains Song (19 page)

Several days later Cora heard a loud whacking noise near the barn. From the porch she saw Avery tugging at the bridle of the stationary white horse. Emerson stood at the rear, holding a board from the fence, which he whacked across the horse's broad rump. The horse stood straddle-legged, as if watering, and looked swollen to Cora in his rear quarters. Neither the tugging on the bridle nor the whacking provoked him to move. Aloud Cora called, “What are you men up to?”

“He won't eat,” Avery replied. “We got to exercise him.”

Emerson let up whacking the beast to stroke the flank where the harness had worn away the white hair. “Lookee here,” he said to the horse. “You ain't even a white horse, you're black.” He patted the rump he had just been whacking, chuckling to himself. This commingling of affection and cruelty bewildered
Cora. An injury long forgotten, buried deep in her nature, reappeared as stabs of pain in the knuckles of her right hand. Emerson continued to whack the horse with the board while Avery tugged at the bridle. Flies rose in a cloud from his rump with each whack. Cora remained on the porch until both men had tired and left the creature to the swarm of flies, too weak to swish his tail. They retired to the shade of the pump house, where they drank buttermilk and discussed the problem. She could see Emerson when he thrust his head forward to spit. Her mind blank, a babble of voices filled Cora's ears. She had been here on the porch in a pause in her ironing, and Sharon's voice had carried as if spoken from a pulpit. Cora had been speechless, but Madge had said, “Mama, she don't mean it the way you hear it.” It might have been last summer, it might have been this morning, Cora standing in the pickle-sharp draft off the kitchen, except that now she knew, as she hadn't before, that Sharon Rose had meant it just as she had said it. It had not been a horse that bit her; she had bitten herself.

Such things concerned her but did not distress her. If Sharon Rose were to ask her, she would now tell her. Cora had not felt then, nor did she feel now, that she might have led a different life—only that this life might have been led differently. Things she had once put from her mind now returned for her to ponder. How could one avoid hearing, or saying, more than what one said?

The hedge on the east, the light glare to the south, the heat to the west, bounded her domain. The air
within the house was like that in the cobhouse, now used by the hens to roost in. The clapboards on the west side of the house were like dead bark-peeled branches. Emerson had once painted as high as he could reach, but he couldn't stand heights. He was now too old to do it from a ladder. He would say, “Come to think of it . . .” then forget what he thought. Otherwise he had mostly changed for the better. Rosalene and Blanche adored him. Cora might find him in the cobhouse, husking popcorn, or in the barn mending harness he no longer had use for. Over the winter he sat in her kitchen with his shoes off, his feet in the oven, comparing Montgomery Ward's with Sears Roebuck's prices. In the drought they needed water. They would drill a deeper well and pump it up. Ned would run pipes to Cora's parched garden, where the sweet corn shriveled before it flowered. Buckets of the water she carried disappeared into the caked earth. According to Emerson, the drought was due to a cloudburst they had had in '28. In the space of three hours the buckets left near the barn had filled with water and overflowed. The whole yard had looked like a lake. All that water had to come from somewhere, and it had come down in a single downpour. In his own mind he doubted it would ever rain again. The fault lay with a government that tinkered with farming, and ended wrecking the rain machinery. If in a long life he was sure of anything, he was sure of that.

When Ned and Madge had married, Cora's garden had grown more than they could eat, or had the need
to put up. Fruit ripened and rotted with no need to pick it. There was so much to eat Cora had simply forgotten the year they lived out of cans. Then it rained less, and blew more, with the only moisture where the snow melted. Along with the dryness the spells of heat might last several weeks, without cooling nights. A drying wind rattled the wind wheel, pumping just enough water for the two cows.

Once green as a park, with dew on it in the morning, Cora's yard was the color of dried hay. The snow-flattened weeds near the barns were too matted to mow. In the evening fireflies rose from the fields of yellow grain like sparks. Buried in the yard somewhere were the croquet wickets, which always tripped Avery and his children. Only Cora seemed to see the mounds where the lost balls were buried. She meant to dig them up when it was warmer, but the stooping made her dizzy. If Madge brought the girls out to the farm they played cards for keeps on the screened-in porch. If the cards were taken away from Caroline she would play marbles for keeps with boys. She loved to win. If she couldn't win, she would cheat. She would rather lose than just play for the fun of it.

Caroline was a pudgy, brown-skinned girl who made people think of Shirley Temple. In Cora's opinion, the child was a show-off. A willful streak in her nature would lead her to do just the opposite of what was expected. Just as Madge had once sat and ogled Sharon, Blanche would sit and ogle Caroline. The seed of independence, the school principal had told
Madge, was often dormant in some natures until it suddenly sprouted. In most other respects Blanche was the image of Cora, already taller than her mother and thin as a rake.

Was it that summer or the next one that the two men came out from the government, in Lincoln, to give advice to Emerson. They found him in the barn seated on the treadwheel, sharpening a scythe. Cora could hear its sharp rasp above their talk, as he let them wait. What did they want? They wanted to help him. They followed him to the house with their coats folded over their arms. They seemed friendly enough to Cora, asking her about her chickens, and her children. The older one had a son in the college at Lincoln. From the upstairs window opening out on the porch roof Emerson called to them to leave his farm. They replied that they had only come out to help him. Through the screen of the upper window Emerson fired his shotgun into the tree that shaded the porch. The men ran to where they had left their car, then drove through the hedge to get to the driveway. Cora felt that Emerson had acted too strongly, but she understood his feelings. It could never be so bad that accepting charity wouldn't make it worse.

To Cora's amazement, Madge found a spoon buried in the grounds in her coffeepot. She could not understand it. The coffee had tasted the same. It angered her to watch Madge make a wad of her dishtowel to wipe the bottoms of Cora's clean cups. Why in the world did she? It proved to be dust, fine as talcum,
visible when she drew a line on the oilcloth, or moved a plate. This dust puffed in a cloud when Cora shook out a curtain, or fussed with the doilies on a dresser. Emerson's socked feet swept a shiny path between the bed and the hallway. Cora had not observed it until Fayrene pointed it out. Her own attention had been focused on the room off the kitchen, where the pattern had been worn off the linoleum. It proved to be too intricate to replace, but Cora brightened up the area with daubs of green and white paint. She went from there, having the paint, to daub white on the steps in the stairwell so they were visible in the dark. The iron frame of the bed, painted white, glowed in the dark like a presence. With the last brushful of the paint she touched up the hardware on the doors and the rusted metal handles of the stovepipe dampers. Emerson made no comment, knowing his way about without the need to look.

It seemed to Cora that he walked about in his sleep. She might see him in the yard, his big hands dangling, standing in the shadow cast by his hat, or moving slowly between the house and the barn with his head tilted forward, the sun on his neck. He had grown so spare his thighs no longer rubbed. It startled him when Cora, in her high shrill voice, called him to supper. He ate with his hat on, there no longer being a reason to take it off. Cats no longer followed him to the house after the milking, there being too little in the pail to slosh. Cora now let it set and skimmed off the cream, to spare herself the work of cleaning the separator. Avery brought them butter and cheese curds
from the creamery. She had her chores. She never seemed to lack for something to do.

She heard the bang of Emerson's hammer on one of the porch posts, but she did not hear him fall. Fearing ladders, he had climbed on a chair to mend a hole in the screen. His straw hat had fallen off, and he sat on the ground, wagging his head. With her help he got to his feet, but it made him dizzy to stand. He lay down on the cot and Cora sat with him, fanning off the flies. He made no complaint. Perhaps the swish of the fanning lulled him to nap. A gray beard darkened his sunken jowls; his lips were compressed to hold his chew in. Cora had had few occasions to study his face. The corners of his mouth and the tips of his mustache were the color of tobacco. Above the ridge left by his hat his forehead was dough-colored, without wrinkles. The fanning of the air stirred the wisps of hair about his ears. They looked huge to Cora, like the shells used to prop open doors. It shamed her to look at him with his eyes closed, feeling in her soul he was a stranger to her, and she to him. He had struck one of his fingers with the hammer and the blood oozed black around the blue nail. He seemed indifferent to the flies crawling on his hands.

This impression of Emerson would displace all others in Cora's mind. He had never appeared young to her. It had been his easy assurance that impressed her. All of that now seemed part of a tranquil past unrelated to this present. The trip from Ohio, Emerson seated beside her, or going before her, walking the
horses, now seemed a journey in the other direction. She was lulled by the creak of the harness; Emerson seemed short-legged in the tall grass. Over and over she saw him open his coin purse and spill the coins into the palm of his hand. Sorting the nails from the coins seemed to please him. Over and over she saw him wind his watch without checking the time. About this journey she had had no foreboding that it would conclude with a nightmare. Emerson still went before her, but they seemed to journey backward, into the past.

In Dr. Schirmer's opinion, Emerson had suffered a stroke. This had caused him to fall from the chair and experience dizzy spells when Cora helped him. Over Cora's objections, a Battle Creek woman stayed in the house for a week, bringing her knitting with her, and a radio. Cora slept in the bedroom upstairs, where she could hear the music through the floor ventilator. It seemed inexcusable she would play her radio while being paid to nurse. Cora walked about the house, her arms crossed at her front, or sat in the rocker on the screened-in porch, her fingers touching her lips, her right elbow cupped in her left palm. If she peered in on Emerson, he looked peaceful.

The Battle Creek woman, Mrs. Berger, had lost her husband in the first war and her eldest son, Lincoln, in the second. Her daughter was married and living in Sioux City. She would rather be a visiting nurse than sit alone at home. Cora was not drawn to her, but stewed a chicken which she served with succotash and pickle relish. Without her radio the house seemed silent
At night Cora would wander about with the smoking lamp, as if looking for something that was missing. The stale air of the house smelled of the mothballs found in the pockets of Emerson's dress suit. After forty years of wear the knees bulged, but the coat looked new.

Like Orion, Emerson lived through the winter until it was March and the snow melted. He was so peaceful, Cora needed the assurance of Ned and Madge that he was dead. Blanche ran off and hid where neither Rosalene nor Caroline could find her. “Let her be,” said Madge. “She's looking for him.” Emerson had never liked the Battle Creek pastor, but that was where both Orion and Belle were buried. Where the earth appeared to be sunken a space was reserved for Cora. In the shade of the trees the women sat in the cars, fanning the air with newspapers. The light glared; a chill wind blew into Cora's face. But Madge remarked that Emerson would like it now that the trees were grown. There were neighbors at the service whose names Cora had forgotten, or never known. How strange the men looked to be standing in the open without their hats. They wore the solemnly blank expressions of young heifers lined up at a fence. She thought of Sharon, but she put from her mind what had been said.

For Cora to live on the farm alone was unthinkable, until they thought it. It was what she knew. Who else would know where to look for the eggs? As soon as he could, with the war ended, Ned would put in her inside toilet. She would burn cobs in the range to cook, but
oil in the coal burner for heat. In January she could visit with Madge if the feuding of the girls didn't drive her crazy, which it did. Madge called her twice a week to chat, and ask how she was. When Cora said that at her age one day was like another, but the nights were different, she felt shooting pains where the horse had bit her, that's what she had felt. Only later, when she thought about it, did it occur to her that it had not been a horse.

The old tree that had once shaded the house now let in so much light she had to keep the shades drawn. Everywhere she went, in the barn or the pump shed, in the cobhouse or the storm cave, or where the rakes and harrows were overgrown with grass, or along the cow trail that led to the pasture, she would find something Emerson had put down and forgotten to pick up. A tool or a hoe, pieces of grindstone, the blade of a scythe without the handle, the right hand of a pair of gloves, taken off so he could search his pockets for matches. In the muck of the stable, a pair of rubber boots. In the pocket of a sweater on a nail in the barn, a lump of half-sucked hoarhound in a piece of bread wrapper. She left it in the pocket, but brought the sweater back to a hook on the porch.

Boards in the sheds broke under her weight, little as it was. In the upstairs bedrooms bats whooshed through the holes in the screens, stirring the curtains. In the seat of the platform rocker she found an egg. Were the hens moving in with her? It confounded her to ponder how it had got there. In a dresser drawer full of Fayrene's doll clothes she found what had once
been kittens. By lamplight she darned the stockings Madge brought her, the screen at her back crawling with insects. In the winter she did afghans and quilts.