Read Ebook: Weeds by Kelley Edith Summers

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Ebook has 1760 lines and 114839 words, and 36 pages

"I ain't a-goin' to ketch up if I don't want to," returned Judith. "An' if I'm tardy, you hain't got no call to be a-frettin' yo'se'f."

This sort of bickering between Judith and her sisters went on daily in the Pippinger home and increased as the children grew older. Luella and Lizzie May, good, right-minded, docile little girls, looked down upon Judith from the height of two whole years of seniority and felt it their duty to try to make her as good, right-minded and docile as themselves.

There was a half-story attic above the three ground rooms occupied by the Pippingers, and this attic was the girls' bedroom. Here the three slept together in a big wooden bed made all of twisted spirals. The bed had a straw tick and in winter many thicknesses of patchwork quilts. In summer one quilt was enough and often too much; for the windows were small and the roof low; and on hot, breathless nights no air seemed to enter. In summer the bedbugs came out of the walls and Aunt Annie Pippinger saturated the bed once a month or so with kerosene and corrosive sublimate, the odor of which lingered for many days after the application. Between the windows stood an old cherry chest of drawers which had once been a handsome piece of furniture, but was now much scratched and scarred by hard usage. Each girl had one of the three drawers, and here they kept their clothes and treasures.

Luella and Lizzie May had each a pincushion of silk patchwork in the then popular "crazy" style, and fatly stuffed with bran. Luella had a box the lid of which was encrusted with small shells surrounding a red velvet pincushion shaped like a heart. In this box she kept carefully folded bits of silk, velvet and lace; locks of hair cut from the heads of all her relatives, wrapped in tissue paper and labeled with the name of the grower, glass beads, fancy buttons, Christmas cards, pressed flowers, small empty scent bottles and the like. Lizzie May had a similar accumulation but hers was housed in a box with a colored picture on the lid. This picture showed a young lady dressed in a very low-necked pink satin evening gown and a white fur muff and scarf, adjusting a pair of skates on pink satin slippers in the midst of a snowy winter landscape powdered with frosting to make it more realistic. Lizzie May liked this picture very much. She often took out the box just to gaze at the lovely pink satin evening gown, the delicate hands and the pink satin slippers.

Poor Judy had no such treasure box. She often looked at her sisters' collections with envious eyes and wished for as much as two minutes together that she too had some nice things. Somehow she had never been able to collect things. Her drawer contained nothing but her little old frocks and underwear and holey stockings thrown together in a tousled heap, and perhaps a few pine cones and clam shells and odd pebbles that she had picked up from time to time.

There were several colored pictures on the walls, mostly calendars of previous years, much fly-specked and yellowed on the edges. One of these, an advertisement for some kind of corset, represented the upper two thirds of a young woman with bright pink cheeks and golden hair, attired in a chemise and a straight-front corset and holding an Easter lily in her hand. On one side of the chest of drawers was an old, much faded chromo showing a child with a tremendously large head, dressed in skin-tight red satin breeches and pale blue coat with lace ruffles in front looking at a kitten which was playing with a pink ball on the floor. This picture was enclosed in a frame the ends of which stuck out beyond the picture, forming little crosspieces at each corner. On the floor were several pieces of frayed rag carpet and before the bed an oval braided rag mat.

Luella and Lizzie May spent a good deal of their time in this sanctum, "redding up," looking over their treasures, exchanging confidences and sewing patch-work blocks. But Judith hardly ever went into the room except to go to bed. She liked her father's company and her father's occupations better than those of her sisters. She stood at his side and watched him as he nailed the bright new shoes with the bright new horseshoe nails onto the hoofs of Tom and Bob. When he said, "Whoa!" she said "Whoa!" with a faithful echo of his tone and inflection. She loved to hear the cheerful strokes of the hammer and watch the sparks fly from the piece of old railroad iron which Bill used as an anvil. When he stretched a piece of wire fence she was there to hand him the wire stretchers, the pliers, the hammer, the staples. And whenever he mended spots in the old rail fence she caused Bill much inconvenience by insisting on lifting one end of each rail. She liked to watch and help him when he had a job of carpentry to do, a bench to make, or a shelf or some new chicken coops for the spring broods. She ran and fetched the hammer, the nails, the brace, and bit. She held the ends of boards while he nailed them, dragged up more boards; and all the time she watched eagerly. As he worked Bill chewed tobacco and whistled and now and then broke out into a rather tuneless attempt at a song:

Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine; Turkey gobbler come up from behin' An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vine In the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.

Judith pirouetting about, would sing the song after him, but with the correct time and tune.

"Seems like you c'n beat yer dad at singin', Judy," Bill would say proudly. "I never was one that could hang onto a tune. After a bit, somehaow, it'd allus git away from me. Hand me them there pinchers--the little uns with the shiny ends onto 'em."

Judith liked to work around the mules and was soon entrusted with the task of leading them to water and pitching hay into their manger. In the stable she would get down the curry brush and comb from the beam where Bill kept them and curry them down with many shouts of "Whoa, ye bugger!" and "Git araound there naow!" When there was an errand to do at the neighbor's, she would ride Tom or Bob barebacked, guiding the old mule proudly with tightly held bridle reins.

She liked to go with her father in the spring wagon when he went to Clayton or Sadieville or took corn to the mill to be ground. The clear morning sunshine, the sweet air, the life of the woods and fields all about them mingled exultantly with the rattle of the wagon as it jolted over the ruts in the dirt road, the strong, horsey smell of the mules and the grinding creak of the brake as Tom and Bob held back on the steep hillsides. Perched beside her father on the seat, she insisted on driving and was indignant when Bill would take the lines from her hands at the top of a steep hill or on the approach of another team.

Whenever they met a neighbor or relative--and almost everybody they met was a neighbor or relative--Bill would rein up the mules, the other team would pull up alongside, and there would be a long spell of roadside visiting. There would not be much said, but it would take a long time to say it; and Judith would sometimes grow impatient.

"Dad, why do you stop so long an' talk to folks on the road?" she would ask.

"Why-ee, I dunno. I allus done so ever sence I was a boy, an' my dad allus done so afore me. I like to know haow folks is a-comin' on. You wouldn't have me drive right on with nuthin but a 'Howdy' would you? 'Twouldn't be neighborly."

The mill was a mile or so beyond the village on the bank of a pleasant little stream which furnished it with water power. It was built of logs mortared with mud, and grass grew in the chinks. It was a very small mill the single business of which was to grind corn into meal for the corn cakes of the neighborhood. When Judith and her father would drive up, everything would be silent; not a sign of life but the turning wheel and perhaps a chicken pecking along the path or a pigeon cooing from the roof.

"Hey, Dave! Hey, Dave!" Bill would call, as he tied the mules to the hitching post. Presently Dave Fields, the miller, would come hobbling down the path from his house which stood a few rods away hidden among locust trees. He was a shriveled little old man with one leg shorter than the other from rheumatism and a pair of merry blue eyes twinkling from under bushy white eyebrows.

"Waal, howdy, Bill. Purty weather we're a-havin' naow. Yer folks all smart?"

"Yaas, we keep middlin' smart. How's yo'se'f an' the woman, Dave?"

"Oh, we git about; we git about. But we hain't what we onct was, Bill. The woman had one o' them asthmy spells last week; an' my rheumatics keeps me purty stiff. But of course we're a-gittin' old. We can't complain. Haow much corn you got?"

"Oh, mebbe a couple o' bushel," Bill would answer, lifting the sack out of the wagon.

"Waal, Judy, an' hoaw're you a-feelin' to-day? You're a-growin' to be a great big gal. You'd best stop here with me an' mammy. We hain't got no little uns no more."

And the old miller would chuck the little girl under the chin good-naturedly, as she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.

Then the mill would be put in operation and Judith would be fascinated by the sight of the golden meal pouring into the hopper.

When the corn was ground, the old man took a tenth for his share and put the rest back into Bill's sack. Then, but with no unseemly haste, the meal was lifted into the wagon and the mules untied and turned in the direction of home.

"Waal, Dave, you an' yer woman come over."

"Yaas, we'll be along by there some day. You come some Sunday an' stop all day with us."

And at last they would go rattling away up the hill toward Clayton.

Then to Peter Akers' general merchandise store to buy flour and sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls, the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith, having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect and admiration.

Often Peter Akers, a baldish, pot-bellied man with a flabby face and old-fashioned sideboards, would lean across the counter with professional affability and chuck the little girl under the chin.

"Waal, Judy, you like to come in taown with yer dad? You'd best stay here an' keep store with me. Wouldn't you like to help keep store?"

Judith, looking straight at him with level, grave eyes, would answer never a word.

Then over to Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, to get some plate shoes in case a neighbor should come with a job of horseshoeing to do. Once Jim looked admiringly at Judith, whom he was really seeing for the first time, although she had been there dozens of times before.

"You got a handsome gal there, Bill," he said.

"All my gals is handsome," answered Bill complacently. "But this one here is more a boy'n a gal. She's her dad's hired hand, she is. She helps me shoe the mules, she does."

"Waal, waal, so she's a blacksmith's helper! I'm needin' a hand. Wouldn't ye like to stay here an' help me shoe hosses, eh, little gal?"

Judith looked him through and through and made no reply.

"Dad, do folks really want other folks' chillun to come an' live with 'em?" she asked her father, when they were back in the wagon.

"No, Judy, I can't say they do," Bill answered. "Other folks' young uns is gener'ly wanted 'bout as much as other folks' ailments."

"Then why do they keep a-askin' me to come an' live with 'em?"

"Oh, I dunno. It's jes a way they have. They done like that when I was a lad too."

"I wish they wouldn't," said Judith.

Then, as they drove back home through the sleepy heat of the noonday, Judith would grow hungrier and hungrier and her one thought would be of dinner. She could smell it as soon as they pulled up in the barnyard: boiled hog meat and mustard greens and young beets and potatoes. How good it tasted when at last she had a heaping plateful in front of her with a generous tin mug of cool skim milk to wash it down!

Judith liked best of all the autumn season, when the sky was a hazy, tender blue and the mellow sunshine lay like a film of golden tissue over all the earth. Then there were plenty of apples to munch; and she could go out into the garden and pick the big, red, juicy tomatoes and eat them alive, as it were, before they had been slaughtered by her mother's paring knife. Then the corn stood in the shocks and the big, yellow pumpkins lay scattered among the stubble, suggestive of plenty. The hickory nuts and black walnuts began to drop from the early frosts, the trees turned bronze and russet and scarlet and the warm air was full of bees and butterflies and other humming, buzzing, fluttering things. The tobacco fields lay brown and bare and deserted; but from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the golden sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine. The big doors, left open to allow a free current of air, showed the long, yellowish-brown bunches hanging thick-serried in the fragrant gloom.

It was an intoxication to her at this time to be alive, to gather and eat the good things that the earth so generously provided, to see the autumn glory of the woods and roadsides, to feel the glow of the sun, the warmth of the earth under her bare feet, and to sniff in the spicy exhalations of the great barns.

On these autumn days the sun sank early; and this was the time that the Pippinger children most enjoyed their play. There was something about the chilly drawing-in of these October twilights that made them want to leap and run and throw their arms about and utter wild, animal-like noises into the gathering night. Judith was always the leader in these games, and her wild abandon easily infected the others. Round and round the clothesline prop they would fly in the game of "Go in and out the Windows," and "The Farmer in the Dell," the long braids bobbing, the boys' shirttails, escaped from their overalls, flapping in the wind with the girls' petticoats. Then, tiring of this, there would be "Hide and Seek," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and the inexhaustible "Tag."

Minnie, the cat, liked these evenings too, and so did her kitten and the white cat that Judith had rescued from the Blackford boys. The cats, like the children, were filled with a spirit of kobold friskiness, as though their evening bowl of skim milk had gone to their heads. In daytime they did nothing but stretch, sleep, yawn, and wash their faces in the sun; but the chill of the autumn evening brought to them also the spirit of adventure. In their strong, slinky litheness, they jumped and darted and climbed; and the children watching them envied them their perfect unison of body and spirit. Minnie, in spite of all her years and the many times that she had been a mother, was a kitten again. Nothing would do her but she must run clear to the top of the clothesline prop, scratch mightily with her front claws as though sharpening them, then make a sudden leap to the grass and circle about like a mad thing. Her kitten darted up into the lilac bush and peered down at the children with glowing topaz eyes, then whisked away to circle after its mother. The white cat, frisking in and out among the shadows, made the children think of ghosts.

Often a wind would spring up out of the west as the twilight thickened, and the young Pippingers would run in the face of it, their hair blown back, their arms waving wildly, their voices ringing shrilly into the autumn night: little Valkyries of the hills.

Once, as they were playing a ring game by the barn, a big red moon rose over the brow of the hill and showed their dancing figures silhouetted sharply in black on the barn wall. The weird little shadow figures seemed like a troop of goblin companions that had come to join their play. The more wildly they pranced and threw their arms about, the more reckless and drunken grew the little shadow creatures on the wall, stimulating them in turn to a still greater frenzy of abandon. The wind blew in their faces and brought subtle whiffs of fragrance from the big tobacco barn down the ridge. The other children soon forgot this evening; but to Judith it remained always as one of the exalted moments of her life.

When the children were called in to supper after these autumn orgies, they would come with ruddy cheeks and blazing eyes. Bill, looking about the table, would say with satisfaction: "Them young uns ain't a-lookin' poorly. Guess we won't need to call in the doctor for 'em yet a spell."

The little glass lamp would be lighted in the middle of the oilcloth-covered table; and there would be fried potatoes and a big red platter of sliced tomatoes and roastin' ears steaming hot--a delicious meal!

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