Chapter Three

The pale Sabbath sun came through the stained glass window church on the Valley road. It came thru and struck at the hats of the women seated in the right hand pews and came no further than the aisle. Stopping there it made a kaledioscope of the faintly colored, faintly outlined reflection of the Christ on the window. Pa Brissy sat on the very end of the Brissy pew and regarded the reflection with appreciative eyes. The preacher's words thundered above him and around him, but he minded the words not at all. Pa had long ago acquired his own ideas of religion, and anything the preacher was saying probably only verified his own beliefs. Occasionally he looked toward the pulpit, however, nodding approval, and now and then he looked about the congregation with a manner of saying he'd told them so!

Mostly Pa studied the reflection upon the unpolished floor boards. He humored his imagination until he could make out the lamb, a little to the right of the lamb there was the staff and then the feet of Christ under His bright blue robe. Pa looked up at the window and smiled satisfiedly into Christ's eyes. The sun rose higher, the lamb on the floor grew more squat, the staff shortened, and only a little of the robe remained. But Christ's feet were plainer now, and Pa wondered how he could have walked so far in the frail and shallow sandals. He recalled reading how He had gone about in so many towns and upon mountains and thru valleys. Pa grew indignant, why, his own heavy boots would have been sorely put to it to have withstood the wear!

"Them things ain't no pertection to a man's feet," he scolded to ma in a whisper and she nodded and frowned in disapproval, not knowing whose feet he meant but reasoning that Pa was right.

Pa often fussed with God over trivial things and he meant to look up in the Scripture when he got home, and see for himself just how far Christ had made out to walk in those sandals, and he's kinda take God to task for allowing it.

Now the closing hymn was being sung and Pa rose stiffly to his feet, with Ma beside him, sharing a hymn book between them. The both scorned looking at the words for they knew every one of them, as they would have said, from their hearts. All the Brissys stood in their pew together. Next to Pa and ma stood JaBen and Dimity. Then came Waite and Elsie and JaBen's children, Benjy, eighteen, Marcia, who was two years younger, and last Thurlow, who was twelve.

After services there was handshaking and talk and inviting to dinner. There was exchanging of sympathies and much tongue-clucking over seemingly unheard of happenings. The men spoke of corn-planting and wheat and the favorableness of the weather. By now someone had bustled the preacher off to dinner. Those whose crops had been good the last years drove away in shiny new cars. Others less favored drove in cars of tall, thin, tin, and there were a few cars of heavy faded elegance, having an air about them of once having belonged to town folks.

The Brissy cars were of neither of these, but were a little lower than the tall tin ones, and a little higher than the new low ones, and a great deal lighter than the heavy elegant ones. Pa's car was square, and rusty black, with inside niceties, such as a bud vase where water had dried, and dried again. And it had big, fist-sized balls of silk cord nailed securely, which were used by Ma and Elsie to ease the bumps down the Valley road. JaBen's car was of the same goggle lighted vintage, but confined its inside splendor to ratty grey plush. The drove homeward now, as they did all other Sundays, Waite driving Pa's car ahead and JaBen following.

When they reached the farm road and JaBen's house, Waite stopped and asked which one was a-going up to have dinner as he did all the other Sundays, but JaBens', piling out at their own gate, returned the invitation which probably neither of the others heard. Anyway, Ma and Elsie had their dinner all ready at the upper place, as did Dimity at the lower......

April was deluged with rain, cold and chill, and the new leaves of the sycamore cupped upward like small umbrellas turned inside out, holding jewels of water upon their fuzzy sides. The pussy-willows, growing along the creek below JaBen's, poked out little gray heads along the brown winter branches, and stayed on with the cold and the wet. The kitchen gardens were flattened as tho the soil had never been stirred.

The Brissy's were used to fighting with nature, and so even tho spring did not come except on the calendars in the kitchens, the knew and accepted the season for what it was, and questioned not its lateness, nor its wanton stealing from the mountain's short summer.

Now May had come and gone, and June was about to be dumped into the Valley. There had been much trading back and forth at the two farms-- trading of boys for horses, JaBen having two of the former and none of the latter. Trading of seed corn and seed potatoes, and of Marcie to help Ma and Elsie, and of Elsie to help Dimity. And of tomato plants for cabbage. They forgot quickly that the spring had been long and tantalizing, beginning in March with cold bright days, and with winds high and ruthless, blowing night clouds about the evening sky and piling them upon the face of the white moon above Turret. Warm days had come to stay the season out, and warm like evenings, with frogs making great to-do in the creek. In Dimity's and Elsie's gardens, rows of lacy carrot and red-veined beet leaves came into being. White and yellow onion sets which had been washed top-side down, were straightened and covered again. Lettuce beds were re-made and fat white beans were put into the ground, to reappear amusingly, a few days later borne upon the wings of the bean sprouts.

They each had set their broody hens and dozens of yellow and black balls popped out from the breast feathers of their mothers. The balls, miraculously, had feet and tiny yellow bills attached...

From the kitchen window Dimity could see the sweet potato field. The ground had been ridged and today the men folks were setting the plants that had been raised in the big hot-bed at the upper place. Dimity could see the mens' backs as they humped along the ridges here and there, like rounded weathered stones that might have been left in the field and plowed about. Marcie and Thurlow were carrying water from the creek and pouring it into holes for the plants. Now and then Dimity caught a glimpse of Marcie's red cotton skirt, brown legs and bare feet beneath it. Later Marcie would come a-mincing across the yard, making out she had lady feet and that the grass was tickling her toes. Dimity would likely laugh at her and remark, "Yore feet air as tough as them pads on Thrasher's toes."

Then Marcie would dip from the sun warmed-rain barrel and wash her feet, a-sitting on the back steps..........

Late summer came and made a batik of the mountainside, dipping the fields into rich, deep dyes of the earth; making gold of the ripening wheat and silvering the pale green of the buckwheat, while the red clover became a rippling stream urged on by the hot winds. Later the clover fell beneath the clack! clack! of the mowing machine where it lay still upon the breast of the earth, curing to a terrible-like sweetness. The wheat bent on heavy heads and waited cutting.

The Brissey women canned the vegetables of the fields and gardens, greedily, for they knew the shortness of the summer and how frost sometimes nipped the corn and tomatoes even as they were hurried from the field. The yellow balls that had been the chicks were now domineck pullets, and white pullets, with here and there are quarrelsome rooster. Sometimes they stalked Dimity's garden, which was unfenced and open, and pecked the ripening tomatoes or craned thier necks and jumped to reach the ears of sweet corn. She or Marcie would come to the door of the kitchen and flounce their aprons toward the garden. The pullets would scurry into the barn-lot but nearly always a rooster would lag behind the others, throwing sassiness toward the kitchen door, poised to run unbravely should a stone or sun-burnt potato be hurled at him.

Few flowers grew in the short season on Turret, but in the farm-yards there were shurbs- lilac mock-orange and clovebush. Bulb flowers they grew, and chrysanthemums. Asters, given a good start in the sunny west window in the dining room, would bloom hurriedly in late summer, unfazed by the first light frosts. Ma Brissy cared not if she had not other than her chrysanthemums. Ma, with her shortening life, Ma was seventy-six, shortened her words accordingly. The chrysanthemums had long been 'santhemums, nor did they mind nor cease their blooming. The flung themselves against the west side of the house and along the white paling fence, and each fall burst into a veritable mess of brown little buttons and shaggy yellow heads. Ma thought she'd had some pink ones somewhere along the way, but nature had, unbeknownst to Ma, gathered the pink ones back into the yellows, gradually, so that even Ma who loved them, knew not whence the pink ones went. Now and then she dug into them, scolding that they were hogs, and sometimes she threw them head and tail over the fence where they were wont to turn reproachful yellow glances at her as she passed. Directly she as bound to notice that they had taken root and were growing in spite of her, remaining 'santhemums to the end of time.....

In the midst of the heavy cultivating Pa lost a horse. All evening Pa had noticed Big Dan and Job had been stamping their feet and snorting. Then he was awakened near midnight, thinking he'd best call Waite.

"Get up, son, I think they be trouble in the barn." Pa shook Waite. Going back to his room Pa dressed and with Waite, hurried to the barn.

"Hold that latern high, Pa." Waite called from the stalls.

"What air happened?" Excitedly.

"The thing that air happened air too bad to talk about." Pa, peering of the manger, saw poor Job lying upon the floor of his stall. Pa could never abide the sight of a horse, down, and now he spoke to Waite sharply.

"Wal, do something, don't stand there a-starin' at a helpless horse!"

"Now, Pa, don't be hasty. Big Dan has done kicked the gizzard outen Job, and there ain't no hurry." Waite was unruffled.

Pa brought his latern closer- Waite was right.

..................

They buried poor Job the next morning, while the cultivating stood still. They'd dug him a hole in the soft earth of the west field. Pa declared, grumpily, to hide his feelings, that this was a tarnation bad time to lose a horse. Marcie stood by her grandpa and tearfully threw a few zinnias onto the filling earth. Then Pa scurried off to the barn and left Waite and JaBen to finish.

Pa wondered if Big Dan had had to pull more than his share of the plow yesterday. Maybe it wasn't just yesterday, but a lot of yesterdays piling upon each other until Big Dan's patience had burst in a mighty flash of iron-bound kicking. Possibly the racket he'd made infuriated him more and more. Possibly, too, he hadn't meant to kill old Job, only frighten him a little. But by then he had grown into a tall white fury, a plow horse no longer, too strong for a plow horse and only a little tamed.

Pa had stood away from Dan, but now he gave in, allowing Dan to nuzzle his hand a little.

"It ware right mean 'o you, Dan, and I reckon you know Ma and me can't scarcely buy no other horse right now, 'specially when we ware a-fixin' to help JaBen send Benjy to the Sannytarium at Far Mountain."

Pa thought Big Dan trembled, crying a little.