CHAPTER EIGHT

The month turned warm for the Indian summer, but the leaves fell. Henry said that he looked for an early cold spell and that he would kill the hogs during the first hard freeze. He told Ellen to look for the jars and pails to hold the lard and to have all ready by the next cold weather, and to hunt among the rubbish in the shed for the missing piece of the sausage mill. Nellie worked with the sewing for the winter, mending a quilt for her bed, the dress she had begun for Ellen lying untouched in the basket behind the door. She told Ellen that the winter would be cold and they had better save the potatoes now while there were turnips in plenty, for three to feed all winter would lower the potato hill fast. No thought and no plan turned upon her going or the return of Jasper, and for this Ellen set to each task assigned her with detached and slavish diligence. She knew each night how the moon stood in the sky and how it waned from the full. The dogs at Stigall’s place howled now and then all through the night, and once Tarbell tapped at her window in the hour when the moon was setting, whispering sweet words, but she cursed him in her breath as she lay in her bed, her body denying him even while it quivered in its loneliness. In the bright light of the early morning the farms seemed to touch hands to affirm that which they had decided. The fire had ceased to be a wonder; it was talked of but little; it was finished. She went about through the bright mornings protesting, her inner ‘no’ wrought into her every task, opposing dumbly such casual phrases as ‘before Jasper Kent went off for good’, until she felt herself to be some living denial, some no set opposite the farms and all the people, Mrs Donahue, Bell, Squire Stigall, Nellie, Henry, Susie Whelen, Pius, Martin Stigall, Tarbell, Kate Bannan, the peddler, the children throwing stones into the walnut tree to knock down nuts.

The key still lay on the floor where she had dropped it and the trunk stood open, for she made nothing ready for any hour of her own, her hours hanging suspended upon the lasting no that lay under her breath like a cry. She found the pails for the lard and washed them clean and set them in the sun to sweeten, and she searched long for the missing cog of the sausage mill. The Indian summer lingered, mild on the hill tops, cool at night in the hollows. One evening while she helped clear the supper away she lifted her head suddenly from her task and looked across the kitchen to Nellie who was turning from a shelf, her arm outstretched. They stood thus for a moment staring at each other, their arms stayed, and then

Nellie said, her eyes wide, her bent shoulders lifted as she listened: