away to school, but his father en’t about to let him. Him nor his mother both.”
I expressed surprise that parents would stand in the way of a child’s wanting to better himself. The Widow shook her head. “I s’pose it sounds small to you. But you have to understand folks around here. They’re set in their ways and it’d take one of them atomic bombs to move ‘em. Worthy, now, he’s different. Always has been. I midwifed him and I’ve seen him growin’ up spirited. Needs a bit of cautionin’ now and then, but he’ll do fine. They’re the hope of the world, the young. Your girl, now, Kate. Is she takin’ to our country ways? Does she seem happy?”
I said yes to both questions, and she continued to query me, a catechism that I decided stemmed from her sympathetic interest in Kate’s asthmatic condition. What did she eat? How many hours of sleep did she get a night? Had she ever been allergic before? What kind of exercise, and how much? Was she subject to fits of temperament or melancholy?
“She’s an only child, now, en’t she? Sometimes an only child’ll take on sicknesses a child with brothers and sisters never gets.”
I explained that while we had both hoped desperately for more children, Beth had suffered obstetrical complications and Kate’s delivery had been enormously difficult. I did not tell her, however, that secretly I harbored the fear that my adult case of mumps had left me sterile, and that it might be my fault, not Beth’s, that we’d had no other children.
The Widow’s questions next focused on Beth, an only child herself. And me, she wanted to know, had I brothers and sisters? No, I said, though Greeks often had large families.
“Fertile, yes.” She tilted her head at a quizzical angle, as though sizing me up. Her eyes twinkled as she said, “Beware of Greeks, don’t they say?”
“Only if they come bearing gifts.”
“Which you have-cinnamon buns. Wily folk, the Greeks. Look how they come in the night with a hollow horse to tumble the walls of Ilium.”
“I’m not out to tumble the walls of Cornwall Coombe.”
“Never knew the joys of children myself,” she went on. “Still, every last boy and girl in the village is mine, in a way. I like to watch ‘em from my parlor window, see ‘em rompin’ down the street. I rap my thimble on the pane and wave; they wave back but they keep goin’.” I felt her gruff, crusty air hid the loneliness she must have experienced during the long years of her widowhood. In another moment, she startled me by reaching out and patting my hand. “You folks be happy, hear? That’s all you’ve got, each other, and bein’ happy together.” I was about to murmur acknowledgment when the Widow called briskly, “Mornin’, Tamar. Mornin’, Missy.”
Skirts hiked up, her bare legs showing, the postmistress was sitting on a porch glider, braiding her little girl’s hair. The child eluded her and, carrying a ragged-looking doll, came down the walk to the picket gate and watched us pass. Framed by the red braids, her elf’s face was milky pale, pinched, and drawn-looking, and her large, washed-out eyes contemplated us with the dull-witted, curiously vague expression that can come of closely bred bloodlines.
“Horsy, Missy.” Slowing the buggy, the Widow jounced on the seat, making a to-do of the mare, causing it to bob its head and jingle its harness. The child made no reply, but only continued gazing at us. “Goin’ to pick a good sheep today, Missy? There’s a girl.” The old woman’s voice was friendly and hearty, and she gave a little nod of satisfaction. I had the sensation the child was staring not at her or at the horse but at me, and I felt unaccountably ill at ease as I looked back at the pale milky face, with its spate of reddish freckles over the bridge of the nose.
Her mother called from the porch, “Missy, come make poopoo.” Before obeying, the child turned, still clutching the ragged doll; again I felt the same odd sensation that the look was in some significant way directed toward me. As we passed on, I casually inquired of the Widow if it was true that Missy Penrose could tell the future. The old lady gave another nod; Missy had strange powers, of that there was no doubt. It was the freckles, she said, two dozen of them, rather in the shapes of the constellation Orion, with its two great stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel. These markings were the stars of her face, a kind of cosmos printed there, and as men might read the mysteries of those stars, so it had been given to the child to read other mysteries.
I continued thinking of the star-speckled face and the deep nature of Missy Penrose, and we rode in silence to the end of Main Street, where the Common lay before us, dotted with tall, spreading trees, the church steeple gleaming in the bright morning light. There was the bell in the tower, the great face of the clock below, and beside the open vestibule doors, old Amys Penrose, the bell ringer, dozing in a chair. On the Common, the green of the grass and leaves was intensified by the clarity of the clean blue sky and the white canvas of the booths and tents that had been set up for the Agnes Fair, with gay pennants fluttering from their peaks. All seemed in readiness for the day’s events: livestock enclosures had been put up, chairs and long tables had been set out for people to eat at, and three tall shafts had been dug into the ground for the shinnying contest.
The idly grazing sheep baaed as we stopped at the churchyard, where the Widow made her way to her husband’s grave and arranged her fresh flowers, then stood silently with head bowed.
I walked to the top of the knoll and looked down the backward slope to where the churchyard ended, bounded by the iron railing. Beyond it was the untended plot, with its marker almost obliterated by weeds and growth. Again I wondered about Grace Everdeen, whose remains lay under the forlorn tombstone, and why she had been forbidden the company of the other village dead.
I turned back.
Head still bent, the Widow was speaking: “Well, Clem, things are lookin’ fine for fair day. Now all we can hope for is the right choosin’.” She angled her head as though awaiting reply. I moved away, affording her a larger measure of privacy for this genial dialogue between the quick and the dead, which for some reason seemed to me a perfectly natural thing.
At length she broke off, raised her head, and, catching my eye, smiled. She came toward me, stopping at one point to look down at another headstone.
“Well, Loren, well,” she murmured, stooping to pinch off a flower whose stem was broken. “Loren’s gone, too, and that’s in the manner of things. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh.”
I looked down at the stone.
The inscription read:
Loren McCutcheon
Who Hoped but Failed
Age 28
“How did he die?” I asked.
“Of drink.”
“At twenty-eight?”
“‘Twa’n’t the drink so much-but the fall he took while drinkin’. Slipped off the barn in the night.”
I was about to ask what misfortunes had caused the unknown Grace Everdeen’s exile, but the Widow, giving short shrift to the dear departed, lifted her skirts and marched from the cemetery, shears swinging on their ribbon.
The street was quiet and deserted, except for the postmistress, who came along the sidewalk on the far side, leading her daughter, Missy, by the hand. When she got to the post office, she turned the child toward the grazing sheep, gave her a pat on the bottom, and sent her off, then unlocked the post-office door and went inside. The child ambled across the roadway and onto the Common, where she slowly made her way among the flock.
Meanwhile the Widow, hands planted on hips, was surveying the old bell ringer, still dozing in the sunshine.
“He’s a codger, Amys.” She chuckled and accepted my hand as I assisted her into her seat. “Forty years our sexton and still he don’t hold with Agnes Fair. Nor much of anything, if it comes to that.” She clucked up the mare and the buggy rolled onto the roadway. “Good Missy,” she called to the child, who did not look up but only stared at the sheep as they moved around her, their bells making a pleasant tinkling sound. The Widow snapped the reins on the mare’s flanks, a swarm of flies arose, and the horse stepped out at a smart pace, back the way we had come, heading out the country end of Main Street.
