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GRACE EVERDEEN

  Deceased

  1958

  Wondering who the unfortunate lady was who had been thus consigned to unconsecrated ground, I returned to Beth on the slope above, and we left the cemetery and passed the church where the old man pursued his woolwork—a muffler, if I was correct—his eye not missing a trick as we continued along the walk to the point where Main Street began. Then we gazed back at the panorama. The sun was bright, the sky blue and cloudless, and spring was everywhere. A man was dressing up a picket fence with a fresh coat of paint; another carried a bucket out behind a house and used an old-fashioned hand pump to fill it. A third sprinkled ashes on a cultivated plot beside his doorway, while beribboned girls dawdled over boys with Sunday-slicked haircuts. Another wagon lumbered past; a dog ran under the horses’ traces, barking at their hoofs.

  I loved the feel of the place: the tranquil, bucolic look, the sense of peace that spoke from every doorway, from each plot of well-tended grass, from every newly blooming garden. I loved the solidity and agelessness of it, of the passersby themselves, simple country people with simple country faces. There was a sense of veneration for that which had gone before, a rigid, disciplined effort to preserve things as they were—even, perhaps, a reluctance to acknowledge things as they are.

  Mrs. Dodd came for us. We spent a pleasant hour driving over to Ledyardtown, about fifteen miles away, and talking with the head of the Greenfarms School, where we were informed they would be happy to interview Kate for admittance next fall. The school, adequate beyond our expectations in such a remote locale, appeared to meet any educational requirements; there was even a riding academy where a course in “equitation” was taught. Kate would be ahorse yet.

  On the way back, I mentioned to Mrs. Dodd that I hadn’t realized tobacco was grown in these parts. Oh, yes, she said, on the other side of the river it was all tobacco, used for cigar wrappers. Beth mentioned the bristly-looking man in the tavern. That must have been Old Man Soakes and his brood from over in Tobacco City, Mrs. Dodd replied. A reprehensible lot, they sometimes came over to buy corn to make whiskey with. Moonshining in New England? Indeed, she replied; the Soakes clan had been making bootleg whiskey for years. It was rumored they kept a still in the woods outside town, though no one had ever bothered to try to locate it. People, she told us, mostly minded their own business. Besides, Soakes’s whiskey was regarded favorably by the village farmers; and it was cheap.

  We returned to the Common to pick up our car, again following the Buick out to Penrose Lane where, coming up the walk, I overheard another passage from Dickens.

  We found the blind man in the sun porch listening to a record player, a device he called his talking-book machine, on which he played books that had been read onto a disk. Shutting the phonograph off, Mrs. Dodd offered us another drink, and we informed her husband we would take the house. A handshake was all he asked to seal the transaction, with papers to be drawn up subsequently, and we lingered in the sunny room for three-quarters of an hour, becoming acquainted with our neighbors-to-be. The Professor seemed to know a good deal about the history of the village and was happy to answer any questions Beth or I put to him. I tried to explain to him my feelings about the place, the excitement I felt at discovering Cornwall Coombe. He listened, nodding at each sentence, and when I had done he said it was understandable enough, but people often ignored the fact that life a hundred years ago was not easy. Time put a patina of affection on yesteryear, and we tended to forget how appalling existence could be in those times, how long and how hard a man had to labor for his food, how difficult childbearing was, how few medicines and conveniences there were; how stern the realities of life.

  Tradition, he continued, was the important thing here: tradition and custom, customs that had been preserved through the villagers’ lineage since olden times. They were a tightly knit, insular group, these corn farmers, apparently determined to cut themselves off from the rest of society in an effort to preserve their own folkways, much as had the Amish in Pennsylvania, the Mennonites in Ohio. What had been good for a man’s father and grandfather was good enough for him; what they had worn, he wore; the tools they used, he used—a scythe to mow the hay, a sickle to cut the corn.

  The Professor sat comfortably in his chair, savoring his drink from time to time, his head directed straight before him, his eyes completely hidden behind his dark glasses, whose side pieces admitted no light. The people of Cornwall Coombe were good people, he continued, from good stock, but their ways were different from most people’s, and they took a deal of getting used to. Some might find it difficult adapting to the village ways, he pointed out, with, I thought, a hint of something in his tone, as though he thought perhaps we might not be able to—or, to put it more strongly, not be willing to.

  The village was not rich, which was all right; small, which was fine; quaint, which was nice. The farmers were sociable according to their custom; worshiped according to their custom; ate, drank, fasted, worried and wept, married, gave birth, and were laid to rest according to their custom; were not particularly interested in what went on in the world and, according to their custom, never went there to see. Were we, he wondered, prepared to adapt?

  Rising with Beth, I said we were. We were prepared for anything. The Professor sipped from his glass and tapped his nail against the rim. He hoped, he said, we would prosper.

  3

  WHILE BETH SQUEEZED FRESH orange juice, I sat at the farm table in our new kitchen scanning the morning news. It all seemed familiar. There had been another skyjacking, an Eastern flight. It was the second that week; the first had ended in shooting, two bandits dead in the cabin, terrified passengers, a disgusted crew. A man in California had gone amok, had killed his wife and four children. It made me sick to look at the paper. The trouble in Ireland—religious persecution in this year of our Lord, 1972; heavy artillery banging away on the Golan Heights; Americans dropping bombs on insignificant Vietnamese huts.

  I turned the page to look for Peanuts.

  “Don’t forget your vitamins,” Beth reminded me. She pointed to the array of capsules and pills she always set out beside my plate: ascorbic acid, Super-Potent B-Complex Alerts, Multi-Vita-Mineral tablets, brewer’s yeast, niacin, and riboflavin.

  I washed them down in sets with the orange juice. Beth poured coffee from the electric percolator, then continued making breakfast while I sipped from my cup. On the radio, Milton Cross was advertising the “Barcarolle” from The Tales of Hoffmann, plus a million other sensational semiclassical glories, all for the low price of $3.95.

  Beth paused to gaze out the picture window at the terrace beyond, with its unfinished wall. “It’s like a beginning, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Oh—today. Somehow it feels like a beginning.” I supposed the fair, locally signifying the end of summer, had something to do with her thought.

  “A new beginning for us?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe we ought to start by going to church tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t necessarily mean that new a beginning.” Daughter of a minister, Beth had shunned churches ever since we’d been married.

  “A token appearance might not be a bad idea, just to grease the skids a bit.”

  She turned, brightening. “Have you noticed? They seem to be changing. Don’t you think they are? Toward us?”

  We had arrived outsiders, city people, not wanted on the voyage. “They” had been aloof—not unfriendly, but as remote from us as their village was from the roads and highways. After our arrival, in my infrequent forays about town, I had met with singular indifference. Then, happily, and for no apparent reason, I began getting friendly nods, a word here and there.

  Fred Minerva would come around to offer some canny advice about insulating the house or to dump a load of fresh manure for the new lawn; Edna Jones would stop by with a begonia cutting, some kale or Swiss chard from her kitchen garden. Suddenly I felt we had neighbors, friends, that
we were at last becoming a part of the life around us and were not merely interlopers.

  “It must be the Widow, don’t you think?”

  I was forced to agree. At least I could see no other answer. The Widow Fortune had become our benefactress. Robert Dodd, our next-door neighbor, had said she was the oldest inhabitant in Cornwall Coombe, a sort of matriarch whom all the villagers respected to the point of reverence, a local antique. She was the woman I had spoken with on the church steps on Planting Day, and she was the first to arrive, in her buggy, at our kitchen door. I suspected Beth was right: after her had come the others. The Widow Fortune—I had told myself her name was lucky.

  I beckoned to Beth, and she came and sat on my lap. I could smell the sweet, natural fragrance of her hair, the lingering aroma of the Pears’ soap she always used. “Is it O.K., sweetheart? You’re not sorry we came?”

  “It’s O.K. And I’m not sorry we came. It’s just—it’s difficult getting used to their ways.”

  “If we want them to get used to our ways, we’re going to have to get used to theirs. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

  She got up and spun a little happy turn. “I love my new kitchen.”

  “Beats Chock Full o’ Nuts.”

  “Ned—you never had to eat breakfast at Chock Full o’ Nuts!”

  “Only kidding, sweetheart.” Listening for Kate’s footsteps overhead, I watched Beth as she scrambled eggs, browned sausage, took rolls from the oven, dropped bread into the new toaster. Her movements were deft and economical, and she moved about the various work areas in a planned pattern, with no wasted motions. I found her extraordinary—but then I always had.

  “Are you going to sketch after breakfast?” she asked.

  “I’d like to finish those tombstones; then I thought I’d walk out to the Lost Whistle Bridge.”

  “All that way?”

  “It’s not far.” With my right forefinger, I felt the small lump that had recently formed on my left third finger, a wart which seemed the result of continual pressure from my various drawing instruments. “It’d be good for Kate to be seen in church, don’t you think? Wouldn’t hurt us, either, getting in good with the—”

  “Natives? Maybe. But I don’t think Kate wants to spend Sunday morning listening to Mr. Buxley preach. It’s difficult enough—”

  Still no sound from upstairs. Kate must be sleeping late—not unusual; she didn’t rest well at night. A violent asthmatic since the age of nine, our daughter had been subject to even more vicious attacks since coming to Cornwall Coombe. At that very moment, we didn’t know what condition she would appear in, whether, in fact, she would be able to go to the fair at all. Or want to. Kate was difficult. Still, we offered ourselves the pretense that all was well, and hoped we were right.

  While breakfast cooked, Beth brought things from the refrigerator and began making the picnic lunch, stuffing plump chicken breasts with a tempting mixture from a blue-ringed mixing bowl.

  I squinted at her, reducing her figure to a silhouette, taking in the series of curves and angles, the splash of dark hair falling over one eye. Bethany Constantine, née Colby; thirty-seven years old; Scotch-Irish-English ancestry; Miss Kemp’s School, Boston; Bennington, Liberal Arts major. Measurements: 35”, 28”, 32”; trim, neat body; a full mouth, perhaps a little too wide for the triangular face; a pussycat sort of face, quick to smile, not so fast to frown.

  But thinner. And dark smudges under the eyes; a brittleness to her posture betraying the fatigue that caused her extra effort in standing straight.

  “Aren’t you eating?”

  “Certainly.” She was snitching bits from the pans on the stove while she continued working. She found a paring knife in a drawer, pulled out the chopping board, and began chopping chives. She made an exasperated sound as she stopped and drew her thumb over the edge of the knife blade.

  “Honestly, I paid Jack Stump thirty-five cents for this knife, and I don’t think it would cut warm butter.” She laid it aside and finished the job with another. “I swear he could sell ice to an Eskimo.” Jack Stump was an itinerant door-to-door peddler who regularly came bouncing his cart up to the kitchen door, trying to soft-soap Beth into buying the latest cooking gadget or housewife’s convenience.

  “Haven’t seen Jack in a while,” I remarked.

  “I know. Hasn’t been around in days. Thank God for small favors. I never heard a man talk so much.”

  Movement upstairs: Kate was awake. Beth heard the sounds, too. She looked at the ceiling, glanced at me, then returned her attention to the chives.

  “More coffee, darling?”

  “Um-hmm.” A woman in Ohio had drowned her baby in a bathtub. Someone had done the same thing the day before. I looked at the date on the newspaper. “This is yesterday’s!”

  “Paper didn’t come yet this morning.”

  “Didn’t?”

  “No. And Worthy’s usually Johnny-on-the-spot. You don’t suppose he’s sick?”

  “I saw him in the drugstore yesterday.”

  Beth brought a cloth and napkins from a drawer, the checked ones she had found when we were in Paris. I took a cinnamon bun, my cup and saucer, yesterday’s paper, and went through the open doorway into the bacchante room. From the kitchen I could hear pleasant domestic sounds: the slam of the refrigerator door, running water, the garbage disposal, Beth humming along with the radio. I got a pencil and began the crossword puzzle. Presently she came in and leaned over the back of the sofa to raise the window behind me. “What a lovely day.” She straightened the things on the piecrust table, and pulled a few leaves from the flower arrangement on the sideboard. “It’s such a nice room, isn’t it? Such a nice house. Aren’t we lucky Tamar Penrose decided to sell!” She kissed the top of my head. Remembering what the place had looked like when we moved in, I inwardly winced and thought back over the endless weeks of renovation: the torn-up rooms, the paint smells, the insidious silt of plaster dust on everything, our tired bodies dropping into bed at night. Now the work was almost done. New kitchen, new bathrooms, new hardware, new screens and awnings. The insulation men were finished, the floor men, the electricians, the heating men. The house was painted inside and out, the dining room papered; Lawson Colby’s furniture, a collection of good antiques, had been brought from storage and arranged in the rooms. Among the remaining jobs were the terrace wall and the skylight in the studio. But our mainstay, Bill Johnson, was leaving next week to spend the autumn and winter in Las Vegas, and we would have to look elsewhere for a handyman.

  “I think she’s got designs on you.”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “Tamar Penrose. I see her making goo-goo eyes at you when we go in the post office.” Tamar Penrose had designs on me? I recalled the way she would manage to stretch across the post-office counter, or sling her hips while lounging at the postal scales. Still, designs? We’d hardly exchanged two words.

  “Half the village is named Penrose, from what I can see,” I said.

  “It’s awful the way they’ve inbred. They’re all direct descendants of the original family. ‘Once or twice removed,’ cousins marrying cousins—that sort of thing. Some of them are a little—you know.” She tapped her temple. “Like Amys.”

  “Amos who?”

  “Not ‘A-m-o-s’,” she spelled. “‘A-m-y-s.’ He’s that marvelous old curmudgeon who sweeps the streets and rings the church bell. The one Kate calls ‘vinegar puss.’ And the Widow’s husband was a Penrose on his mother’s side.”

  “Was he—?” I tapped my temple.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. How old do you think she is?”

  “Who?” I was trying to think of a four-letter word for “decree.”

  “The Widow.”

  “Dunno.” I wrote in “fiat.”

  “I suppose she could be anywhere from sixty to ninety. Maggie Dodd says it’s the best-kept secret in the village.” She carried my empty cup into the kitchen.

  “How long a widow?” I said through the doo
rway.

  “Ages. Maggie says it was quite a love match. It’s the honey that does it, I guess.”

  “Makes love matches?”

  “No, dopey. It’s the Widow’s honey that keeps all those old farmers young. Mr. Deming must be eighty, and he looks—”

  “Seventy.” Ewan Deming was chief among the village elders.

  “The same with Amys. Half the farmers in the village are over sixty and they still work a whole day.”

  “How do you account for it?”

  “The Widow calls the body the human house. She says to stay healthy, watch the cows. Cows have common sense and know what to eat. Like lots of people don’t,” Beth continued from the kitchen.

  I heard the sound of Kate’s feet on the stairs, then glimpsed her as she passed through the front hall beyond the dining room; in a moment she was with her mother.

  “Hi.”

  “Morning, darling. Sleep well?”

  “Nope.”

  “Don’t forget your vitamins, dear. All set for the fair?”

  “Guess so. Bet it’ll be corny.”

  It was going to be one of her smarty days. “C’mon,” I called, “it’ll be fun.”

  Carrying her orange juice, Kate came in and kissed me. “Hi.”

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Her hand trembled as she drank from her glass, and I could tell she’d had another bad night.

  “It’s not every day you get to go to a real country fair.”

  “Cut the commercial, Daddy.” She stared out the window, popping the vitamins between gulps. Her sleepy face looked doleful and lethargic. Kate with her unmanageable hair, her urchin’s face, her sandpapery voice—poor knobby, angry Kate. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face pale.

  “They sure got a lot of yokels around here.”

  “Yokels?”

  “And some of ’em are crazy.”

  “Who’s crazy? I haven’t seen anyone crazy.”

  “Missy Penrose is crazy.”

  “Darling, don’t say that,” Beth said from the kitchen. “Missy’s not crazy; she’s a little unusual, that’s all.”