Weeds (Kelley)/Chapter 11
She felt less abjectly miserable after she had learned the cause of her distress of body. As time passed, her symptoms became gradually less violent, and at last disappeared altogether. The nausea passed away, and she was able to eat again and enjoy her food. The pictures on the wall took on their old, natural look; and she got out Lizzie May's present from under the sheets and pillow slips in the bureau drawer and found it once more a delight to her eyes.
It was good to feel like herself once more and to be able to get pleasure instead of loathing from the multitudinous small things that make up the major part of life. It was like waking up from some dismal nightmare and finding the earth still a good and pleasant place. The happiness of freedom regained more than equaled the irk of the old bondage. And as Judith stretched and laughed and enjoyed the rain and the sun and ate heartily and loved Jerry more than she had ever loved him before and felt herself overflowing with physical wellbeing and spiritual content, she knew the joy of reacting to perhaps the most powerful stimulant in life, the elixir of sharp contrast.
And now that she was well again there was plenty of work for her to do. The tobacco, which had survived the warm, damp seasons fatal to many a tobacco crop, must be stripped and stripped quickly, so that Jerry could haul it off to market before the price dropped. Jerry had bulked the tobacco early in November, and had been stripping for some time. But it was slow work for one pair of hands. Now that Judith was able to help him, things went faster.
They got up in the dark, chilly winter mornings long before it was day, ate breakfast and did the morning chores by lamplight, and were ready to go out into the slow, gray dawn while the sky was still only faintly alight and the familiar outlines of the barnyard only dimly visible. The last thing that they did before leaving was to scatter food for the hens, which had not yet come from the roosts. Then they climbed the hill to the ridge path that led to the big tobacco barn.
At the far end of the ridge, the tobacco barn lifted its weathered bulk into the sky. Built on the highest point of land, the wide sweep of lonely fields and pastures dropped away from it in every direction. Its roofs fell from the ridgepole with the broad sweep of a buzzard's wing; and it seemed like some great bird brooding over the wide, solitary expanse, or like some gigantic, incense-breathing temple built by these poor shanty dwellers to their one god, the all-powerful god of toil. From its point of vantage it dominated the landscape, somber, strong, and implacable.
But to Jerry and Judith it was only a tobacco barn and they hurried to it as the factory hand goes to his daily dungeon.
By the time they reached the little stripping room that leaned wearily against the tobacco barn, it would be light enough to begin to strip. They shared this stripping room with Hat and Luke, the two couples working at opposite ends of the little oblong box. Sometimes Hat and Luke would be there already, and in that case the fire would be lighted. If they were the first to arrive, Jerry would quickly light the fire in the little rusty box stove and they would settle down to work.
All day long they would stand stripping the soft brown silk leaves from the thick, woody brown stalks, tying them in bunches and assorting them according to color and texture. The softest, silkiest, most pliable, and lightest colored leaves were the best in quality. Descending from this there were many grades ending in the scraggy, reddish top leaves, torn and discolored leaves and leaves that had been touched by frost.
At noon the two couples, still at opposite ends of the room, would eat the lunches that they had brought with them and immediately fall to work again, working steadily until the short winter day was over and the twilight blurred the shades of brown before their eyes.
It was strange and unnatural how little conversation went on among these four young people as they stood working together day after day. Judith would have liked to talk and often wondered why she and the others did not talk more. Sometimes she made a deliberate attempt to start conversation; but it always ended in nothing. There hung over them always a heavy air of self-consciousness and constraint that smothered all natural spontaneity. There were several private and personal reasons for this. Jerry continued to nurse the old grievance of the stolen tobacco plants, and added to it the suspicion that Luke was getting away with some of the cream of his crop. He could steal a good many bunches without the possibility of their being missed, and Jerry opined that he was just the man to do it.
The minds of Hat and Luke dwelt largely upon the subject of money. They had one all-consuming desire in common, which was to get their crop stripped and on the market before the price fell. In this at least they were at one; aside from it their thoughts and desires were their own. Hat meditated upon what she had been reading in her latest copy of the "Farm Wife's Friend," mused upon her wrongs and Luke's shortcomings, and toyed gingerly, yet deliciously with thoughts of intrigue. Sometimes she lifted her black eyes to Jerry and saw that he was strong, healthy and handsome, then forgot him the next moment in thoughts of some imaginary lover.
Luke, in the short intervals of thoughts of gain, thought about the fox that he had hunted the night before and the good swigs of whiskey that he had had at Bob Crupper's out of a gallon jug stopped with a corncob. And he remembered how good the whiskey had made him feel. Not infrequently his mind wandered from these thoughts to dally with meditations more vague but more attractive. Sometimes when Judith lifted her head she met his little blue eyes fixed upon her with a look, the meaning of which was unmistakable. Instantly he would withdraw his eyes and work furiously at his task.
Once Jerry surprised one of these looks. His face flushed a dark, angry red and his fist involuntarily doubled, the knuckles protruding formidably. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. Luke had not noticed that he had been observed; and Judith, absorbed in her work of sorting, had not seen either Luke or Jerry. The little pantomime had taken only a second to perform and was gone as though nothing had happened.
Once Hat surprised this look and shot a lightning glance from under her heavy black eyebrows to see if Judith was answering it. Reassured from this direction, she turned her bold eyes and cast a black look of uncontrollably furious jealousy at her husband who was now bending again over his tobacco.
So the little human comedy went on; and Judith, the only one who was not cherishing ulterior motives or covert suspicions, found her natural desire for companionship swamped in this heavy undertow of suspicion, greed, craftiness and lust. There is an idea existing in many minds that country folk are mostly simple, natural and spontaneous, living in the light of day and carrying their hearts on their sleeves. There is no more misleading fallacy. No decadent court riddled with lust of power, greed, vice, and intrigue, and falling to pieces of its own rottenness, ever moved under a thicker atmosphere than that which brooded over the little shanty where these four fresh-cheeked young country people stood stripping tobacco.
They sighed with relief when the long job was over and the tobacco was ready for market.
Tobacco was an unusually good crop that year and Jerry's half amounted to nearly two tons. In addition to his own tobacco, he was hauling a small crop for one of the neighbors, so his load was a heavy one. It was an exciting morning when the great, towering load stood outside the tobacco barn with four horses attached in the first gray glimmer of the dawn, and Jerry, perched on the high seat, cracked his whip over the four broad backs, and started out on the thirty mile trip to Lexington.
When he came home next day there was a check for three hundred and eighty-four dollars and seventy-six cents folded in the inside pocket of his coat. His tobacco had brought the high average of ten cents a pound. He had never been so proud and happy in his life as when he opened the check and spread it before Judith's delighted eyes. There was money to finish paying for the horses and money to put in the bank. His joy was marred only by the knowledge that Luke had averaged a cent a pound more for his crop, a knowledge which confirmed him in the suspicion that some of his finer grades had been stolen.
As Judith's waist measure increased, and it became apparent to everybody who saw her that she was with child, she became the recipient of the advice and confidence of all the women of the neighborhood. The confidences were many and varied; and the advice of one woman often flatly contradicted that of another. But they were all alike delivered with an air of conclusive authority. She found that when these women spoke to her about her pregnancy they adopted a manner almost identical with that which had revolted her in Hat: an air of great intimacy and secrecy, as though the subject was of such a private nature that it concerned only the talker and listener and brought the two together into a close and exclusive atmosphere. With this was combined a certain archness and playful levity which seemed to Judith the very soul of lewdness. Jerry's mother, Aunt Mary Blackford, a well meaning soul according to her lights, was one of the worst offenders; and she presumed upon her relationship, as relatives have a habit of doing. Judith grew to dread the approaches of these women as one loathes and dreads a pestilence. She resented their insinuating interference in a matter which she wished to concern only herself and Jerry; and the manner of their interfering seemed to her vile and disgusting.
After having endured several lengthy visits, she learned to lock the door and hide in the bedroom when she saw a female figure approaching over the brow of the hill. The visitor would try the door, and finding it locked would knock loudly and imperatively, then wait a short time and knock again. Having satisfied herself that there was no one at home, she would scrutinize the dooryard more or less closely, according to the extent of her curiosity, and at last turn away and plod up the hill again. Not until she was quite out of sight would Judith dare to open the door.
Sometimes, however, she was not fortunate enough to see the visitor in time to feign absence from home. This was the case one afternoon when Aunt Maggie Slatten, the mother of Hat, and of many other children, bore down upon her.
They had not long since finished dinner. Jerry had just left the house to go back to his spring plowing, for it was February, and Judith was washing the dishes, when the door was unexpectedly opened and disclosed Aunt Maggie occupying the major part of the door space. She heaved in and sat down heavily in a chair, which creaked at the onset of her tremendous weight.
"Land alive, Judy, it's a hard climb over them hills," she gasped, laboriously taking off her mud-encrusted overshoes and setting them under the stove to dry. "An' the roads is that deep in mud, a body kin hardly pull their feet along. But I hearn haow you was in the family way. An' knowin' it was your first an' haow you didn't have no mammy, I felt I jes had to come daown an' set with you a while. Well, an' haow air you a-feeling', Judy?"
Judith sensed at once the familiar aura that had become her abhorrence. There was an air of condescension, too, as from one who confers a favor. She had never liked Aunt Maggie.
"I'm a-feelin' all right," she answered coldly, and went on washing the dishes.
"Well, that's good, Judy. It's a great blessin' to be well."
Having disposed of her overshoes, she laid aside her black sateen sunbonnet and started to divest herself of her outer garment. This task proved too much for her.
"I reckon you'll have to give me a little he'p here, Judy," she breathed, already winded by her efforts. Judith went over and helped her to peel the wrap from her fat arms and shoulders. It was an ancient garment called some decades earlier, when it had been new and fashionable, a dolman. It was of broadcloth, now faded into a greenish tinge, and it was trimmed with fringe, which was somewhat greener than the cloth. She laid the dolman over the back of a chair with the care and reverence due to best apparel and sat down again, smoothing her white apron over her lap.
Aunt Maggie was a woman of great girth. She had a large, flabby face of the color of cold boiled veal, so many large chins that they quite obscured what might have been her neck, a colorless, thin-lipped mouth and small, piercing, light gray eyes which gave Judith the uncomfortable feeling that they were bent upon prying into the innermost recesses of her private affairs. She had a way of asking a question in a sudden, direct and commanding way and accompanying it with a swift, searching look from her keen gray eyes, which seemed to say that she was entitled to the whole truth and she meant to have it.
Undaunted by Judith's assertion of present perfect health, an assertion which seemed to Aunt Maggie to be somehow rather indelicate, she proceeded, as one vested with authority, to inquire into the earlier history of Judith's pregnancy and to wrest from her admissions upon the basis of which she launched forth into the subject that she had come to discuss. She had a hoarse male voice and the air of one accustomed to dictate to others. Glancing about from time to time, as though constantly mindful of the fact that walls might have ears, she related to Judith all the details that she could remember—and her memory was excellent—concerning her own many pregnancies and the pregnancies of various of her neighbors and kinsfolk.
After a while Aunt Maggie's stream of talk began to flag. There was no stimulation to be gotten from Judith, who asked no questions and made few comments. And even a woman of fifty-three who cannot read or write, but has had seven children and three miscarriages, cannot talk forever on the pathology of pregnancy without at least some little assistance from her listener.
The talk began to be punctuated by heavy silences.
The whole afternoon was spent in this way, the silences growing longer and heavier as time dragged on. Still Aunt Maggie made no move to go.
"And where's the baby clothes, Judy?" she inquired. "Fetch 'em an' let me have a look at the dear little things."
"I hain't got any made yet, Aunt Maggie," answered Judith, putting a stick of wood into the fire.
"What, no baby clothes yet! Why, Judy Pippinger, hain't you 'shamed of yerse'f? Why, I'd a thought you'd 'a' bin sewin' fer the baby this four months back."
"How many months' sewin does it take to cover a little infant a foot long?" inquired Judith. "I 'lowed I could run 'em all up in a day on the old machine at dad's."
Aunt Maggie was aghast at this sacrilege.
"I never put in a stitch for one o' my babies that wa'n't done by hand," she proclaimed self-righteously.
Judith mentally reviewed the members of Aunt Maggie's family, a heavy, snub-nosed, dull-eyed swarm, and wondered in just what way they showed the benefits of hand-sewn baby clothes. But she said nothing. Aunt Maggie was too dominating and forceful a personality to have her prejudices challenged.
At last the February day began to gray to a close. The little window admitted less and less light; and Judith, hoping to hasten Aunt Maggie's departure, lighted the lamp.
"It's sinful to waste kerosene, Judy," commented her visitor. "You could 'a' gone a good half hour more 'ithout the light. 'Waste not, want not,' is a true sayin'. Well, I'll hev to be a-gittin' back home an' see to supper an' the milkin'. The young uns don't stir hand ner foot if I hain't there to tell 'em."
With alacrity Judith helped Aunt Maggie on with her dolman, and even knelt down on the floor and put on her overshoes. Seeing her at last really prepared to leave, she felt of a sudden quite kindly toward her visitor and suffered a twinge of shame at having treated her so coldly. She smiled in a cordial and friendly way as she ushered Aunt Maggie out of the house.
But when the door had closed behind her visitor the smile vanished and a look of empty weariness settled upon her face. It seemed as though Aunt Maggie still sat in the room and with her all the other stuffy old women of the neighborhood. Their prying eyes leered at her out of the gloomy corners. From their presence issued a stifling and oppressive aura.
When Jerry came in he found her sitting slackly in the old rocking chair, her long hands hanging limp like dead things.