Weeds (Kelley)/Chapter 8
Moving into the new home was an exciting adventure for Jerry and Judith. Neither of them was much past the playhouse age, and this first home settling was like the realization of their childhood longing to have a great big playhouse with things in it that really worked. Together they set up the newly-polished cookstove, which they had bought for eleven dollars at a later sale. Jerry put up shelves and drove in rows of nails, while Judith arranged the blue dishes and the shiny tin saucepans. Jerry, who was a good amateur carpenter, made a big bench for the washtubs and a baby bench to hold the wash basin and soap saucer. It was unusually warm for March, warm enough to have the door open. Judith polished the cobwebby little windows so that more sunlight could come in, and it fell in golden squares through the clean panes and in a slanting oblong through the open door. As Jerry worked on the benches just outside the door and Judith bustled about inside, they were continually thinking of important things to say to each other and rushing to the door to say them. The bright new shavings from Jerry's plane caught the sunlight and gave out a clean, fresh smell. Grass was springing up green through the dried growth of last year. Every few moments the trill of a meadow lark fell like a rain of bright bubbles through the sunny air. Robins were flitting about prospecting for a good place to build; and crows in the distance cawed their joy at the return of warmth and food.
The ancient chest of drawers was refurbished. Jerry had screwed empty spools into the places where the drawer knobs used to be and covered the whole with a coat of brown varnish paint that made it shine again. In the big drawers Judith folded away their clothes and spread one of the new red-bordered towels over the top. On the walnut dropleaf table she laid a square of glossy new oilcloth. She made up the bed with the new sheets and the bright patchwork quilts. The old rocking chair in which Uncle Nat had died was gay with a bright chintz cushion. Thus the old man's possessions, already hoary with experience, took on a new outside gloss and began a new life, like an elderly widower who marries a young wife and for a little while shakes off the accumulations of the years and almost fancies himself young again. Drinking coffee from chipped and cracked blue cups a century old, Judith and Jerry laughed and chattered with no thought that those who had first drunk from these cups, perhaps as young and gay as themselves, were long since turned to dust in some neglected graveyard.
It was astonishing how much they could laugh. They laughed when the sizzling hog meat spat hot grease into their faces. They laughed when Jerry leaned too heavily on the table leaf and almost overturned it. They laughed when they saw flies buzzing in the sunny window pane, a sure sign of warm weather. They laughed when the new butcher knife fell on the floor and stuck daggerwise into the soft pine board. And when there was nothing whatever to laugh at, they laughed at nothing whatever, because laugh they must.
The first sleep in Uncle Nat Carberry's walnut bed was disturbed by no ghost dreams of the tragedies, comedies, and tragi-comedies that had been witnessed by that ancient piece of furniture. If old beds and chairs, like old houses, are haunted, it is to the lonely and the disillusioned that they reveal themselves. Before young lovers they stand abashed and hug their secrets to their bosoms. The old bed received them in its arms as though they were its first pair of lovers. And when at last they fell asleep under the gay patchwork quilts, they slept as soundly as two children until the early March dawn brought them their first waking together—supreme of moments!
But life could not be all play for Jerry and Judith, nor did they in the least expect it to be so. Work had never as yet showed its ugly side to them, hence they had no dread of it. They were accustomed to work and expected to do so all their lives as a matter of course. How else could they use up all the abundant strength and energy that surged each day as from an inexhaustible wellspring into their young bodies? So on the third morning Jerry harnessed up his new team and went forth whistling to plow the land that was to be put into corn. Judith watched him disappear over the brow of the ridge, then went back into the house and washed up the dishes and set the rooms to rights. Having done this she went out again into the sunny dooryard.
She had always disliked the insides of houses. The gloom of little-windowed rooms, the dead chill or the heavy heat as the fire smouldered or blazed, the prim, set look of tables and cupboards that stood always in the same places engaged in the never ending occupation of collecting dust both above and beneath: these things stifled and depressed her. She was always glad to escape into the open where there was light, life, and motion and the sun and the wind kept things clean. So, having done up her morning chores, she went out into the yard and busied herself with building chicken coops out of packing boxes. She worked away happily, unmindful of the passing of time, until she was startled to hear the rattle of harness and Jerry's voice calling "Whoa," to the horses.
"My land, if I hain't clear fergot to put on a single bite o' dinner," she gasped, as she raced into the house and stuffed kindlings into the cold cookstove.
When Jerry came in after unharnessing and feeding the horses, she was frantically beating up cornmeal batter, and the sliced meat was sizzling in the frying pan.
"Didn't I tell you I was no good of a housekeeper," she laughed, as Jerry caught her in his arms and kissed her. "I was a-buildin' chicken coops, an' I done gone clean fergot all about dinner till I heard the harness a-rattlin'. An' I was a-goin' to make you a biled puddin' to-day an' cook some o' that cabbage Aunt Eppie give us. The Pettits has got so much cabbage left over this year they're a-feedin' it to the hawgs. Naow we can't have nothin' but hog meat an' cakes."
"Hog meat an' cakes is plenty good enough fer me," opined Jerry. "If you cook 'em they'll taste to me better'n biled puddin' and cabbage cooked by the Queen o' Sheba. Anyhow we'd otta be glad dad turned loose o' the hogbellies. Most folks eats corn-meal an' coffee three times a day this time o' year."
The strong salt pork and fried corn cakes, washed down by something that Peter Akers sold as coffee, a concoction at once rank and insipid, tasted delicious to their healthy young appetites. Laughs between the bites of corn cake, ecstatic giggles mingled with the salt pork and kisses that spilled the coffee from the cups, glorified their little meal into a feast royal. When it was over, Jerry went back to his plowing; and Judith, having washed up the dishes, put on her sunbonnet and jacket and walked over to see Lizzie May.
Lizzie May had been married to Dan Pooler for over a year. They lived about two miles away on the Dixie Pike in one of Uncle Ezra Pettit's tenant houses. It was a gaunt, two-story box standing bleakly on the top of a hill. Not a tree stood anywhere near and it looked as lonely as a water tank at a desert railway station. Its four weather-grayed sides were turned sullenly to the four winds.
Lizzie May was sitting by the stove sewing carpet rags. Her cotton dress was fastened at the throat with a little brooch of washed gold and imitation jewels, a present from Dan before their marriage; and she was wearing one of the fancy little frilled aprons that she loved to make. She was several months advanced in pregnancy and was not looking well. Her pale, small-featured face showed lines of endurance, and already a look of age was pinching the youthful curves.
"Why, Lizzie May, you don't look a bit pert. What's the matter?" inquired Judith, as she flung her hat and jacket into a chair and sat down opposite her sister. The younger girl's presence seemed to shed a warmth and radiance about the prim little room that enfolded and enhanced everything except her sister sitting coldly opposite her.
"Oh, I dunno. I s'pose it's my condition," answered Lizzie May languidly and a little importantly. "My stomach don't bother me no more; but my back feels weak most all the time and pains me a good deal some days." She launched into a detailed description of her symptoms which Judith, who had scarcely had a pain in her life, could not follow with much sympathy or understanding.
"You need to git out more, Lizzie May," she rallied, "and not hang in the house so much. I'd feel sick too if I stayed around this kitchen as much as you do. You don't hardly never go to dad's any more, an' I s'pose you won't come to see me naow I'm gone to housekeepin'. I'm sure I don't see what keeps you inside here all the time. You hain't got much to do. 'Tain't like as if you had milk to handle an' turkeys to chase."
"Mebbe you don't think I got much to do, but I do," answered Lizzie May, bridling. "You wait till you been a-keepin' haouse yo'se'f fer a spell. Agin I scrub this floor every second day an' polish the stove twict a week an' sweep an' dust an' wash an' iron an' bake bread an' cook the meals an' scour the black off the pans, I don't git much time to go a-gallivantin'."
"But you don't need to scrub the floor an' polish the stove so often. The way you keep 'em shined, anybody'd think you et off of 'em 'stead of off the table. You know what you make me think of, Lizzie May? You act jes like if a little tame rabbit would shet itself in its cage an' never came aout an' then spend all its time a-workin' hard to keep its cage clean."
Lizzie May pursed her prim little mouth with a superior air.
"'Taint no use fer you an' me to argy over sech things, Judy," she said haughtily. "We got dif'rent notions about haow a house otta be kep'. Fer me, I like to see things nice an' I'm allus a-goin' to try to keep 'em nice. I like to do housework; an' even though I don't allus feel well, the work wouldn't bother me a bit, if I didn't have other troubles."
She sighed heavily.
"What other troubles have you got?" asked Judith incredulously.
"Oh, I have lots of other troubles. You'll have 'em too, naow your married. For one thing, Dan goes off fox huntin' nights an' nights an' leaves me here alone, an' I git that skairt. You wouldn't believe all the noises there is when anybody's alone at night. Night afore las' I was sure I heard somebody a-walkin' raound an' raound the house. I was in bed, an' I pulled the quilts up over my head an' tried to fergit it; but I kep' on a-hearin' it. At las' I couldn't stand it no longer, an' I got up an' looked out the winder; an' it was only Uncle Jonah Cobb's ole mare Betsy that had broke through the fence an' was a-wanderin' raound an' raound the house a-eatin' grass. But it give me a awful scare jes the same. Things like that makes a person nervous."
"Nonsense, Lizzie May! You born an' raised here to be askairt to stay alone in the house nights! Why, who's ever been bothered in their house that you ever heard on?"
Lizzie May had to admit that she had never heard of any of the neighbors being attacked at night in their homes; but nevertheless she was afraid.
"Them dawgs too," she went on. "He's baound to keep 'em all. You know how I've allus hated a haound. The meal they eat is enough to fatten a hawg. An' of course it's me that has to cook it fer 'em. An' another thing, when he goes fox huntin' I never know if he's a-goin' to come home drunk or sober. Whenever he gits with Edd Whitmarsh, the two of 'em jes drinks theirselves as full as ticks. An' we can't spare the money neither. If I spent the same money on clothes for myse'f or the baby that's cornin' he'd be the first to say it was a awful extravagance. I wonder why men allus has to drink? Us wimmin git along without it. An' no matter if there hain't money in the house to buy a sack o' flour, they kin allus find some to spend on whiskey. One night las' week Dan come in so drunk he jes laid hisse'f daown on the mat beside the bed with all his clothes on an' declared up an' daown he was in bed. An' I had to take off his shoes an' his clothes an' pull an 'yank an' pretty nigh kick him afore I could git him to crawl up into bed. I tell you I was that disgusted. If I'd a thought married life was a-goin' to be anything like this, I don't think I'd a been in such a hurry to git married. There's times when I wish I was back home with dad agin. It wa'n't like that in the books we used to read. You 'member them books?"
Lizzie May named several novels by such purveyors of roseate fiction as Bertha M. Clay, Mary Jane Holmes and Laura Jean Libbey, which in ragged paper covers had found their way into the Pippinger home.
"Yes, but in them books it allus ends when they git married," Judith reminded her. "They never tell what happens after. All they say is that they lived happy ever after."
"Yes, an' they're allus about rich people," chimed in Lizzie May. "I did used to love to read them books an' fancy I lived like that. I guess rich husbands is dif'rent. It must be awful nice to be rich."
She sighed and her blue eyes looked wistfully out of the window, where white clouds could be seen chased by the March wind across a bright blue sky.
The shriek of a whistle pierced the air, and a train half a mile away roared along the track on its way to Lexington. Through the little window the smoke from the engine could be seen in a white, moving column.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we was all rich an' ridin' away through the country on that big train!" she sighed. "When you're poor an' stuck allus in the same place, life gits to seem so dull."
In Lizzie May's imagination only the rich and happy rode on trains. She figured riding in a train as a sumptuous and palatial progress toward some idyllic pleasure goal. The reality of smoke, cinders, stale air, germ-infested plush, and filthy floor, tired women and dirty children, staid spinsters, and sleek commercial travelers with fat necks, dingy people hastening anxiously to deathbeds or drearily to new jobs: all this was happily unknown to her. Her eyes followed the white moving column of smoke hungrily, wistfully.
"Yes, it must be awful nice to be rich," she sighed again, as the column of smoke disappeared.
"Yes, I s'pose it is nice to be rich," rejoined Judith, with just a momentary far-away look in her eyes. "But somehow it don't bother me much that I hain't rich. I have lots o' fun a-doin' and a-makin' things. All this mornin' I built chicken coops. I got six dandies. No rat'll git my chicks this spring. An' I'm a-goin' to buy three settin's o' turkey eggs from Aunt Maggie Slatten an' set 'em under hens. If they're raised by a old hen they don't wander off so far when they're growed an' git ketched an' stole. An' nex' winter when I have to set in the house an' the evenin's is long, I'm a-goin' to sew me rags fer a carpet too. I've begun savin' 'em. Them's awful nice rags you got there. Haow did you manage to git 'em all sech nice colors?"
Lizzie May's face brightened and the wistful look disappeared.
"Yes, if I do say it, I got nice rags. I cut 'em jes as fine an' even as I can; an' then I tie 'em in bunches an' dye 'em the color I want. These yaller ones is dyed with cream o' tarter an' potash, like Aunt Abigail showed me haow to do. An' the blue ones I done with real strong blueing water. For the other colors I bought the dye. You kin dye a whole lot o' pink with one package o' red dye. I'm a-goin' to have Aunt Selina weave the carpet stripèd: yaller, blue, pink, green, an' red; yaller, blue, pink, green, an' red. All along like that. It'll be nice an' bright an' cheerful. I want to try to have my front room real nice. Dan's Aunt Carrie give me a pair of lovely lace curtains fer the winder; an' I got three cushion covers patched. One of 'em is all silk, with flowers embroidered on nearly every piece. Lemme show it to you."
She ran into the other room, brought forth the "crazy" monstrosity and spread it with pride before Judith's admiring eyes. The joy of achievement, the rich glow of the creator gloating over his creation, filled her with warm radiance.
"My it is nice," exclaimed Judith, reverently feeling the smoothness of the silk and satin pieces with the tips of her fingers. "I'm a-goin' to make me one when I git enough silk pieces saved—if I ever do."
Encouraged by this admiration, Lizzie May brought out the other pillow tops together with the coarse imitation lace curtains, and spread them gleefully before her sister. She was a child again in the delighted ownership of these "pretty things." Judith, too, was filled with childish envy and emulation. Together they exclaimed and rhapsodied over the colors, the embroidered flowers and the fine herringbone stitching done by Lizzie May's painstaking little hand.
"They're awful nice to have," said Judith, with an intake of the breath. "But somehow I've never had much patience to make sech things. I've allus liked better to draw pitchers of hosses an' dawgs an 'mules an' folks that looks like 'em. I do love to draw sech things yet. But of course they hain't pretty. Mebbe now I'm married I'll take more interest in sewin' an' makin' nice things for the house."
"Of course you will, Judy," encouraged Lizzie May, with more than a touch of patronage.