Weeds (Kelley)/Chapter 18
All that summer, with the unwelcome baby growing in her body, she was tart and irascible and closed herself up morosely from Jerry and his affairs. She showed no interest in his work in the field. She never asked him about his corn and tobacco or made any offer to help him. When he came in with a story of a broken plowshare, strayed cattle that had got into his corn, fences that the sheep had broken down, she showed no interest nor sympathy. In the chill of her indifference he too grew sullen and irritable.
"Seems like you might take a little interest in a man's troubles, Judy," he said sulkily. "Mammy allus did."
The mention of his mother did not tend to increase her good humor.
"I hain't yer durn mammy," she answered tartly. "An' mebbe you think I hain't got my own troubles to tend to."
She had never felt much sympathy for him in his ambition to save money and buy a home of their own. The thought of such a home had never made any very strong appeal to her. When Jerry had talked about his place, as he often did, she had tried to look interested. But oftener than not she caught herself thinking about something else. Jerry sensed with vague irritation the chill of her lack of sympathy.
Gradually her feeble interest had diminished like a thin cloud on a hot summer day. She no longer made any pretense of caring about the prospective home.
"You know durn well you'll never save enough money to buy a piece o' land," she said to him brutally. "Tenants never does. If you ever git a chanct to own a place it'll be when yer dad dies. That's the on'y way."
Her voice sounded bitingly hard, cold, and bitter. He looked at her reproachfully, like a dog that has been kicked.
"What ever's got into you, Judy, to talk so hateful?"
She shrugged her shoulders and went on frying the inevitable corn cakes.
She grew more and more shiftless and slatternly about the house. More and more mechanically she dragged through the days. As she hung over the washtub or plunged the dasher up and down in the ancient oaken churn or stood by the stove frying three times a day the endlessly recurring corn cakes, her body moved with the dead automatic rhythm of old habit. Her face was habitually sullen and heavy, her eyes glazed and turned inward or looking out upon vacancy with an abstracted stare.
In October the baby was born.
It was a girl this time, a skinny little mite weighing not much more than five pounds. Judith had very little milk for it, and their one cow was nearly dry; so Jerry began to look around to see where he could get another cow cheap and on time.
One Sunday morning when they had overslept they were wakened by a light tap at the window and Uncle Sam Whitmarsh's genial voice penetrated their drowsiness.
"Waal, naow, if you two hadn't otter think shame to yerse'ves sluggin' abed with the sun a-shinin' an' the crows a-cawin' outside. Why, it's most seven o'clock, an' the whole countryside been up an' about this two hours. It's queer, too, what things'll happen to some while others sleeps." Uncle Sam's voice took on a serious if not tragic tone. "While you two was a-sleepin' here like babes, she's bin a-turnin' me out o' my home. Yaas, sir, already here afore breakfast she's up an' slammed the door in my face. Whatcha think o' sech carryin's on? Turnin' a old man past seventy, the father o' nine chillun, out o' the home that he's worked an' slaved to keep a-goin' this past thirty year an' more! I ast you, Jerry, if I hain't put more work onto that place'n what the place is woth a dozen times over? An' all 'cause she's got the deed to it in her name she shets the door in my face. I hain't a-goin' to stand fer sech goin's on no longer. I hain't no dirty dawg to be kicked outdoors when he gits underfoot an' whistled back when they want the caows brung home. Yaas, sir, Samuel Ziemer Whitmarsh is a old man; but he hain't a-needin' no repairs put on him yet; an' I reckon there hain't many young fellers kin learn him much about tradin' an' fetchin' in the money when it's needed. Nex' time she looks to me fer money, she's a-goin' to find it's buyin' some other woman a bonnet. An', speakin' o' tradin', Jerry, I hearn you was a-needin' a fresh caow fer Judy an' the baby, an' it jes comes lucky I kin lay my hands on the very caow to suit yuh. She's a nice black fam'ly caow, eight year old no more, a easy milker an' fills the bucket. She's got a purty red calf by her side, an' the calf goes along with her. She's yourn, calf an' all, fer sixty dollars. I don't ast fer no cash, jes a little note comin' due in three months' time an' you kin pay me when you sell yer terbaccer. Whatcha say?"
"I'll be over to have a look at her, Uncle Sam," said Jerry, stretching his arms above his head. "Got her at Uncle Amos's place?"
"Yaas, she'll be in Amos's barnyard. Come early afore somebody else grabs her up. Waal, I'll be steppin'."
"Is this the eighth time she's turned him out, or the ninth?" yawned Judith, as she slipped her petticoat over her head. "Funny haow he allus says exactly the same things. An' then when she's minded to take him back he goes back jes like a little lamb."
"I wonder what's wrong with the caow?" mused Jerry.
After breakfast he went over to see the cow and came back about noon leading her. She was a tall, slimly built cow with a long neck. The calf ran alongside.
"I think she's a purty good buy, Judy," he said, as they stood inspecting her. "'Course she hain't none too young; but she seems sound an' healthy an' she looks like a good milker. An' then most people that has caows to sell jes naow wants cash. It's sumpin to be able to git her on time. Uncle Sam hain't a stingy ole skinflint neither. He gimme this good rope an' halter. She seems cheap, calf an' all. Mebbe there's sumpin wrong with her. If there is I s'pose we'll find it out soon enough."
They found it out next day. In the morning when Judith went out to milk her, her teats were as flat and flabby as if the calf had just sucked her dry. The calf was tied in the shed and had not been with her. When Judith came back into the kitchen Jerry was dumbfounded at the sight of the empty bucket.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said, and stood scratching his head in perplexity. Then his face brightened with an idea. "I tell you, Judy, I'll bet she sucks herse'f. She's got the build of a caow that kin do it."
Through the day they watched her and found that it was even as Jerry had surmised. He threw on his cap and went over to Crupper's place where Uncle Sam, being the brother of Aunt Amanda Crupper, was staying.
"Say, looky here, Uncle Sam, whatcha mean by sellin' me a caow that sucks herse'f?"
Uncle Sam looked up from the piece of harness that he was mending for his brother-in-law and smiled a little quizzically.
"Waal, Jerry, somebody's gotta be the owner of a caow that sucks herse'f, hain't they?"
"Aw, come on naow, Sam, you know that's a dirty trick to play on a neighbor." Jerry kicked into the ground savagely. "Whatcha goin' to do about it?"
Uncle Sam looked a little hurt.
"Naow, Jerry, don't git mad. When I'm a-dealin' with a neighbor I like to tell him the truth, an' mos' allus I do tell him the truth. But there's times when it comes jes a little hard to tell him all the truth, an' this here is one o' them times. Naow, Jerry, a caow that sucks herse'f is jes as good as any other caow pervidin' you don't let her suck herse'f."
He went back into the stable and came out with a wire contraption dangling from his hand.
"You jes fasten this here little muzzle on her nose an' she won't suck herse'f no more. When she's a-grazin' it falls away off'n her nose and lets her eat, an' when she tries to suck herse'f it's there. You jes put that on her an' she won't give you no more trouble. I'll stand back o' what I said that she gives good milk an' lots of it. Judy an' the baby'll take on flesh fast when they git to drinkin' that good milk."
Warmed by the glow of Uncle Sam's genial personality, Jerry had to smile.
"Why didn't you gimme it yestiddy, along with the rope an' halter?"
They laughed together.
"Waal, Jerry, I won't say I didn't know you'd be back after it."
They named the little girl Annie.
The winter after she was born was a hard one with unusually frequent cold spells. In Scott County the weather is never very cold for long periods. Most of the time it is dull and cloudy, with dismal rains and deep, sticky mud underfoot. Sometimes, however, the wind sweeps icily from the north, freezes the mud, and sends the thermometer for a night or so down to zero.
In the house in the hollow the Blackfords had been protected from gales; but now they knew all the changes of the wind. Perched shakily on the top of the ridge, the flimsy little house rocked and strained before the raging northwesters and piercing northeasters. The loose-fitting window sashes rattled; the doors stirred uneasily. The bits of old rag carpet laid upon the floor rose in waves as the wind billowed under them. The unceiled house, no snugger than a wagon shed, let in wind and cold everywhere. The wind fluttered the towels over the wash bench and rattled the saucepans that hung on the wall beside the stove.
On cold, windy mornings, when Jerry got up to light the fire, the house was no warmer than the out of doors. The water bucket was frozen. The milk in the pans was crusted with ice. Cold boiled potatoes left over from the day before were frozen into rocks and eggs were cracked open. The slop bucket on the floor in the corner was frozen solid and the bucket sprung from the force of the expanding ice.
On such mornings it took a long time to get things thawed out so that they could have breakfast; and even the fire did not have much effect on the icy atmosphere. If the wind was from the west it created such a strong draught that it drew all the heat up the chimney. If it was from the east, the stove drew badly and belched forth intermittent clouds of smoke and spatterings of ashes. The fuel, too, was not of a sort that makes much heat. The tobacco growers take no thought for the morrow in the matter of wood. The wood is cut each day as it is needed, frequently by the women. It is usually green saplings or half rotted fence rails. These latter are often sodden from recent rains and have to be dried out in the oven to make them burn at all. When at last they do burn they give only a faint glow of heat.
Judith grew waspish when the fire would not burn. On Sundays, when Jerry was home from the stripping room, she raged at him for not providing better wood. He was churlish and disheartened because much of the tobacco that he was stripping had been bitten by frost. He snapped back at her and sulked and when she was not looking sneaked away to the kitchen of some neighbor who had a warmer house and a less irritable wife.
She was left alone in her prison with the chilly and restless children. On cold days she kept the two boys dressed in all their outdoor clothing, even to their mittens. When she took the little girl out of her cradle, she wrapped her in shawls and blankets.
Jerry had raised a patch of cane that year. He hauled up cane and stacked it all around the house to try to turn the wind. The cows, drawn by the smell of the cane, kept breaking through the rickety fence; and soon had it all eaten up. He stacked up more; but as fast as he stacked it, the cows broke in and ate it up. All around the house they left hoofprints and round, brown cakes of dung the size of a large dinner plate.
All day long for days together, as long as the cold spell lasted, the slop bucket stood frozen solid in the corner, anchored to the floor by a surrounding island of ice. When at last the thaw came and the ice melted, the leaky bucket, its bottom sprung outward, teetered unsteadily and slowly dribbled its dirty contents.
While the cold spell lasted Judith kept keyed up, energetic and irascible. With the thaw she relaxed into an exhausted torpor. As she wearily heaved out the contents of the greasy slop bucket and washed up the floor under it she sighed and her eyelids fell together asking for sleep.
There were war prices for tobacco that year. They ran as high as forty cents a pound. But the summer had been a dry one and the tobacco was light and of poor quality. Much of it, too, had been nipped by an early frost. Jerry thought himself lucky to get a check for two hundred and thirty-six dollars. Out of this he had to pay forty-seven dollars for hired help.
Guss Dibble, whose wife had a new baby, traded his crop for a cow, and considered that he was doing well.
The winter was a constantly recurring round of thaws and cold spells. It lasted far into March. It seemed as if it would never end. At last the change came all of a sudden and it was summer again.