Plains Song (8 page)

In late May, after a night of wailing brought on by an attack of colic, Eula just died as Belle sat and rocked her. It was so like she had dropped off to sleep it didn't upset Belle as much as it should have. Sleep and death were so alike at times it was hard to tell one from the other, and in the case of Eula it might have been Belle's choice. Belle had blurted that out herself, and then gone right on as if she hadn't said it. Orion would sit and not hear much that she said unless he was assured what it might be, averting his gaze, like Emerson,
to what he might see out the window. Without confiding in Cora, without consulting Emerson, without so much as discussing it with each other, they buried little Eula at the far back of their pasture under a tree that shaded some of the neighbor's cows. The grave was not marked. Cora knew only what she was told. Emerson heard this from her, as he did everything, working a straw between his teeth, his blinking gaze averted, saying aloud to himself, rather than to Cora, that Orion no longer had the wits he was born with because of that girl. He did not say, but Cora knew he was thinking that Belle had worked a spell on Orion. She and her crazy hillbilly family were given to ignorant habits and superstitions. To bury a child without a service, like a dog or a cat, was a heathen act. It was against God's law and common sense to bury a child in a grave without a marker. Before the summer was over they would never be able to find it. Was that their intent? Since Orion had married, and built his wacky house, and let other people do his farming for him, Emerson failed to understand his brother and he wasn't so sure he any longer felt obliged to.

Cora was troubled at night by the thought of the child lying in the cold earth. Had they put it in a box? Or had they merely wrapped it in the flour and sugar sacks used for dishcloths? She wanted to know, but she dreaded to hear what Belle might say. She was shocked too deeply to speak about it, yet she understood in her soul what had happened. Belle had not liked the child. She wanted to forget that it had ever existed. The way some animals destroyed the weak
members of the litter, Belle did not want this child to make demands on her. Her nature was sure. It told her without confusion how she should act. What could be done for those, and Cora feared there were many, who did not distinguish between right and wrong? What could be done for those who were able to distinguish but chose to do wrong? If Belle had cast a spell over Orion its shadow could be seen hovering over Cora, who saw plainly as a crack in a plate the strengths and weaknesses of her own nature. She was God-fearing. But there were things in this world that scared her even worse.

It was hardly surprising that Belle grew more possessive of both Sharon Rose and Madge. She would put the two girls in a wicker wash basket and tow them to her house on a wooden runner sled. Madge was such a plump, fat child she caused Belle to grunt when she was lifted from the floor. Sharon Rose was almost frail, but her pretty little mouth was seldom shut. She was also selfish, in the way of most children, and took from Madge whatever she had been given, but since Madge didn't seem to mind, she soon gave it back. She seemed to be less acquisitive than domineering, yet when she dominated she soon lost interest. If not assured that children grew into grownups, Cora would have been appalled by what she saw. If deprived of Madge, Sharon Rose would howl as if in pain. There were things Cora saw that she refused to admit, turning away to fuss with something, look for eggs, or stand in the dark of the stairwell for a moment, her
apron pressed to her face. Both children proved to eat paint, where it flecked, and the soft muck where the dishwater was emptied. Without something in her mouth, Sharon Rose babbled in a singsong voice, almost like a bird warbling, but it also signified the filling of her diaper with number two. She was Belle's child, Cora reasoned with herself, and let her squirm in it.

With or without the little girls, Cora's chores were never done. She tooks eggs to Battle Creek to be hatched in the incubator, and brought back the chicks to swell her flock of Plymouth Rocks. Emerson had built her some sheds, with a fenced-in run for the chickens, hoping to keep the cackling hens away from the house, but what he proved to have done was to have drawn a line between his farm and Cora's yard. The yard included her chickens, the pump on its platform, the storm cave along the path that led to the pump, and as much as half an acre of grass and weeds. One day Emerson came in from the field to find the weeds scythed between the house and her sheds.

“You folks run out of steam?” he asked her. The way Emerson took a dig at Cora was to include her in with Belle and Orion. He had come to the house with two pails of water, which he lowered to the ground, then turned to look behind him. One could see very plainly where the cut grass ended and the weeds began.

“I've grass in mind for the yard,” Cora said, “not weeds.”

“I take it you know the difference,” Emerson replied.
He didn't turn to see if she did: he waited to hear.

“It's been scythed,” Cora said, “but what I plan to do is mow it.”

Enough time passed to allow the water to settle in both pails. “I guess it's your yard,” he said, stooping for the pails, and she held the screen open until he had entered, “but don't you ask me what you plan to do for horsepower,” and she never did. It was her yard, it would be her grass, and she would manage to care for what was hers.

Already the yard had some shade from the trees near the house. As the hedge grew taller she would be able to walk from the house to the pump out of the sun glare. Cora seldom left the house without a bonnet. The worst possible complexion for this country was the one she had brought with her. Just a ride in the buggy and the skin of her nose dried and peeled. In her outdoor chores she wore cotton work gloves; if it rained she wore Emerson's two-buckle galoshes. At no time did it cross her mind how she might look. Against the cool morning air she would slip on the coat or sweater not worn that day by Emerson. The tobacco odor that saturated his clothes was not disagreeable to her in the open. It neutralized the acrid smell of the henhouse. Without clearly grasping why, Cora had felt dispersed, her workday too short to deal with the endless chores of the farm, but once she had determined her own domain she could see what each day had accomplished.

On the backside of the cobhouse, where it was
sunny and windless, she cleared the ground for a seedbed and a garden. Emerson was not lazy, but anything he hadn't done the day before, or had to be told to do, he had to ponder. Orion plowed it into furrows for her while Emerson was making up his mind. Right away he disagreed with what Orion had done, but it was too late. He was good with the cows, as Orion wasn't—they would moo and balk whenever he came near them—but if Emerson stuck his head into the henhouse the hens would stop laying. The cackling might go on far into the night. It worked better if everybody had their place, Belle helping with the washing and the children, Cora in the house and yard, Emerson in the barn and the fields. One thing he did better than anybody else was sit in the yard, on Sunday, with the babies, or lie out on his back and let them crawl and paw over him. Belle startled Cora by saying, “He wouldn't do that for long if they was boys, not girls.” This saying tantalized Cora, but it provoked her more than it pleased her. Why would the lumbering Emerson, like a big friendly dog, rather be crawled on by two little girls than by boys? It was Belle's way to blurt out remarks Cora was slow to forget.

Emerson didn't spoil the girls, the way Belle did, or make a fuss over them in the manner of Orion, who scared their mothers half to death the way he'd take Sharon Rose and swing her by the heels. She shrieked when he did it, making a sound like a calliope. As the summer ran down, Cora found the time to sit, after washing the dishes, on the cool of the porch. In the evening hush, the chickens quiet, she could hear
Emerson muttering to his cows and the squirt and froth of milk in the pail. Madge slept in a clothes basket, free of the tireless Sharon Rose, and Cora was free of Belle's ceaseless prattle. More and more, it seemed to Cora, Belle's prattle was less an expression of her high animal spirits than a need to break the silence around her. Orion took his hounds and went off hunting whenever he could.

Cora had tried, and failed, to put a stop to the cats' following Emerson and his milk pails to the house. She had her chickens, he said to her, he had his cats. While they waited at the screen, he would crank the separator, then put the pail into the yard for them to lick clean. He would wash himself, using her yellow soap, lathering his face and neck but staying clear of his ears, wetting her floor as he splashed himself with water, blowing and wheezing like he was drowning. He would empty what water was left through the screen, then stand there drying his face and hands, watching the label of the Pillsbury flour appear on the wet cloth. At that point, if he thought it might rain he would say so, otherwise he was quiet.

Orion made the little girls dolls out of corncobs, with tassels of long taffy-colored hair. Belle sewed them up bean bags, with rag doll faces, that came with the sacks of flour and sugar. Cora had surely not lacked dolls as a child, but she frowned on the attention the little girls gave them. Madge seemed more content with her dolls than Sharon Rose. Was that because they were silent, and would listen to
her?
Both little girls spent hours hiding in the cobhouse just to
annoy Cora. Belle seemed like a child herself, the way she would cry out and get excited. The word “Shar'n!” was like a bird's cry in her shrill, high-pitched voice. Of course, the child never answered. She was usually to be found behind the sacks of popcorn that were waiting for Emerson to shell them. Belle was fearful for Sharon whenever she was missing, but took little comfort in her presence now that she was expecting. “What would she do with another girl?” Emerson asked. What might she blurt out to a question like that?

Belle had spells of moodiness, and Orion might wake up and find her missing, and have to search for her. Walking about at night relieved her. Seated with Cora, a basket of mending between them, she would fall asleep. Neither Sharon Rose nor Madge held her attention, and she seemed indifferent to Orion. It was Cora who would find him, and put a plate at the table for him. Two days before Christmas Orion was off somewhere, hunting, when Belle began her labor. Before Emerson could fetch anybody, she gave birth to a child with Orion's blond hair, a birthmark on the left forearm. It seemed so frail and lifeless Cora feared it might be dead. Dr. Geltmayer arrived, but nothing he could do would stop Belle's internal bleeding. She died peaceful, looking like a young girl with tangled hair and a deathly pallor. She shouldn't have had another baby so soon, Dr. Geltmayer said. If Belle could have spoken up for herself, what would she have said to that? Cora wondered. A Bohemian girl, who still talked her own language, came from her people near
Blair to help with the new baby. She was a strong girl, and a good worker, but her strange speech confused the little girls. If Orion had had his own way, would he have buried his wife on the farm? Emerson thought so, and said so, and the brothers were so close to blows Cora threw dippers of water on them. Orion left the farm and was not seen again until the day before Washington's birthday, coming back from the Ozarks with a new saddle horse and three more hound dogs.

Cora had fretful, squalling children to care for in the face of Emerson's fury. She could hear him cursing to himself as he milked the cows. What had begun as a pig farm was now Orion's dog farm, but the folly of it relieved Emerson's anger. That, and the fact that he knew Orion was crazy. He had been crazy to marry a hill girl in the first place, and what had rubbed off on him had only made him worse. He was good for nothing but shooting off his guns and living with his dogs.

The new girl, Anna Pilic, would have made a good wife, but Orion seldom set his eyes on her. He left his house if she came over to clean it, and cooked his own meals. For her part, Anna Pilic could not lose her fear of his dogs. She did not ask, but Cora sensed that she wondered what sort of woman it was who had lived with them in her house. What sort of woman Belle was, from where she had come (even her age was unknown to Orion), and why she had departed in the manner she did, leaving the child nameless and unknown to her, occupied much of Cora's thought. She could not accustom herself to Belle's being dead. Cora missed her, in the hot, steaming kitchen, or running
like an animal between the houses, her hair wild, her blouse forever unbuttoned, so vibrantly alive to think of her as dead was unthinkable. At night Cora listened for the snap of the twigs and the drag of her dress as she approached the porch. If Cora lifted Sharon Rose, she would hear Belle cry, “I'll take her! I'll take her!” since it was known she resisted Cora. But with Belle gone it seemed to Cora that Sharon Rose made less fuss.

Nothing would persuade Cora to terrify the little girls with the caged wild animals at a circus, but against her better judgment she went with Orion and Anna Pilic—Emerson scoffed at the thought of it—to the Chautauqua in Nehigh. In the dark of the tent, hung with smoking lanterns, she saw scenes from
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Little Eva, to Cora's great relief, escaping from Simon Legree across the blocks of ice. (She did it on a rope that swung her, like an angel, from one bank of the river to the other.) Anna Pilic was so excited she sometimes put both hands to her eyes. Sharon Rose and Madge observed it all in silence, Sharon's eyes as bright as candles. Neither slept a wink on the long ride home, the night filled with the creak of the buggy, the clop-clop of the horse.

For days Cora was distracted with the thought of a world so near, yet so far. The only black woman she had ever set eyes on had been in Omaha, near where they crossed the river. Cora had little desire to see more than she had already seen, or feel more than she had already felt. The crowding of so many people into one great tent had been more disquieting than pleasurable,
with the squealing of the boys and girls under the seats like mice in a shaken basket of cobs.