Chapter Two

Because the furrows were laid from east to west, the field looked, from the east end, where Waite stood leaning against his plow handle, a little like a partly opened fan. The late evening sun filled the long black furrows and gathered them together at the west end.

JaBen's boys had been following the plow for the last hour. They each carried a tin can into which they dropped fat, white grubs picked from the new-turned clods.

"Pa promised us we could go a-fishin' tomorry." They told Waite, and he kept a disapproving silence, thinking that JaBen was too easy with the boys, letting them idle around fishing when there was corn planting on hand. Waite and Elsie were child-less, and he did not understand nor hold with such slackness.

Directly the two big horses were loosed from the plow, and with reins slackened, Waite followed them into the barn-lot. Pa was there and he helped Waite with the feeding and rubbing down. Pa admitted he was too old to be a-following of the plow, but he would not relinquish the care of the barn and his share of the horses.

"Air we ready to start a-plantin' now, son?" Pa made to ask, from beneath the flank of big Dan.

"We air, Pa, and I don't ap-preciate JaBen a-lettin' the boys idle around fishin' tomorry." Waite's voice was tired and peevish. "I meant they should drop whilst JaBen and me covered."

"Tut now, I'll drop for you and Marcie can drop fer Ben." Pa was making peace for the boys, remembering how he had loved to fish and how it weren't the boys' fault that corn planting and fishing fell on the same day. What Waite didn't understand, Pa thought, humorously, was that fish that air a-rarin' to be caught just naturally got to be caught.

As Pa and Waite finishedj the barn work and went toward the house, they looked down upon JaBen's house where the blue smoke of the supper fire drifted up, up and away into nothing. Waitej wished mightily that he had a boy to scold over fishing. Maybe he'd scold only a little and let him go after all.

They went into the kitchen where their own supper waited....... and night came from somewhere back of the sunset, settling with a gentle wash of dark in the valley below Turret; ascending slowly until only the faint dark outline of the forest top showed where the mountain ended and the sky began.

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

Down at the lower place, JaBen sat with his feet in a foot-tub of water, warm and soothing to his feet, tired from the rough ground. He had rolled his overalls high upon his legs and given himself up to the comfort of the kitchen rocker. The while he soothed his feet, JaBen cultured his mind. He held upon his knees a copy of a book he had gotten from the mail-order house. The name of the book was "How to Speak Correct English."

Generally the Brissey men had been contented with what learning they could reasonably expect, but not so JaBen. In his own words, JaBen wanted to make something of hisself.

The light from the lamp fought back the darkness that entered at the open door and scarcely made enough light for him to read by, but he knew the pages so well now that a glance at the larger type was all he needed. For a year he had had the book and during that time he had struggled with his missing g's and his heritage of ain's. He had struggled with his having's, and with his alien weres. Before the inky newness had been worn from his book, JaBen had known it to be his romance, the answer to something that somehow he had missed in his youth.

Dimity indulged JaBen his whim for learning, but she would have none of it for herdelf. This evening she sat near the kitchen table, a bit of rug in her lap. ...

JaBen was tired and the hot foot bath made him sleepy. He nodded and the book closed itself upon his knees. Dimity brought him a coarse sacking towel and gently prodded him awake.

"Get yore feet outen there, JaBen, I declar' I'd rather clar up this mess myself than have you a-trampin' about the kitchen in yore bare feet and a-carryin' the dirt into the bed."

"You-all can just dry my feet whilst yore at it," JaBen said, teasing, and Dimity threw him a scornful look.

JaBen would go to bed now and maybe he'd lie a bit and dream about his raspberries. All day long he'd worked among them, and as he'd worked he had put two and two together and they had made exactly four. And he'd put four and four together and they had made exactly eight. His passion for raspberry growing had leaped within his exalted heart and he had hurried into the house to find Dimity. He had explained to her that a fortune could be made a-growing raspberries if only a fellow used good judgment in letting the old canes breed and bring up a mess of little ones. Just so many little ones, tho, the judgment coming in knowing when to take the grubbing hoe to them. He had explained how he'd only had twenty feet of canes last year and this year he'd dug the new growth and set twenty more. Last year's canes were white with blossom now, and he was certain Dimity would admire having the crop for jelly.

But JaBen's enthusiasm had cooled a little under the placid gaze of Dimity as she pointed out the fact that frost had laid low and blackened the strawberry patch two years and running and she was in no mood to set more plants to waste.......

JaBen was asleep the moment his head lay upon the pillow and he relaxed noisily upon the straw-filled tick that made his bed. Dreams of raspberries, tall silvery, rose-caned raspberries floated thru his head, along with dreams of the morrow, which was Saturday and the beginning of corn-planting.