Harvest Home

Harvest Lord’ll marry his Corn Lady-’ceptin’ like Justin and Sophie, which come as somethin’ of a shock. But Roger’s decided on little Gracie. Then Mrs. Everdeen puts her foot down, and revokes the banns. Says Gracie’s got to give Roger back his ring. Then, after a while, Gracie starts actin’ funny. Long about the time she quit the fields and put on shoes, she just seemed to go haywire. Did all sorts of crazy things.”

I motioned Bert for another beer. “Like what?”

Amys blew his nose and wiped his eyes. “Well, she stopped combin’ her hair, for one thing. Took to wearin’ the same dress day in day out. Sassed the Widow. Hitched her fanny at the pastor. At Midsummer’s Eve, she slipped a whole pie under Mrs. Buxley’s rear end just afore Mrs. Buxley sat down. Rolled her eyes at one of them Soakes boys. Roger was plenty mad. Everyone was. ‘Cept me; I just felt sorry for her. None of this happened right off, mind you-’twas more gradual-like. One Spring Festival, she fought with the boys in the street. Right out there where you put down them Soakeses, she took on Ferris Ott and laid him in the dust. Then when Roger bought his horse-”

“The one he broke his neck on?”

“Ayuh. She challenged Roger to a race, and she won. Now, nobody could beat Roger’s horse-but Grace did. Folks said she stole some of the Widow’s herbs and put it in the horse’s oats. Roger was so mad he says to Gracie to give his ring back. Then she disgraced the whole village-or so they think.”

“How so?” I sipped my drink. Amys dragged on his cigarette, blew out the smoke, swigged his beer.

“Well, sir, you can see it, surely. She’d become a terror. Barefooted, wild hair, screamin’ and yellin’, puttin’ her nose up, swearin’. Folks were angry. She was the Corn Maiden. Roger’d given her the honor and she didn’t seem to care. There wasn’t nothin’ she wouldn’t do to shock folks or make them think ill of her. Then come Agnes Fair, and that was the end. Roger was bound to win the pole-shinny, but Grace denied him the pleasure. She loses him the wrestlin’, too. Next, she has words with Ewan Demin’, and then she’s gone.”

“She left.”

“Ayuh.”

“Where’d she go?”

He shook his head, drank, wiped his chin. “Nobody knows. Left on Agnes Fair day and didn’t come back until almost two years later. But it was too late. Roger said if Grace was goin’ to act that way, Tamar could be Corn Maiden, and come the play, Tamar was crowned in her place. But what most folks didn’t know, Gracie’d returned the spring before. It was like she couldn’t stay away. The winter after she left was a hard one. Snow on the Common five feet deep, people tunneling out to feed the livestock. I lost four of my sheep that year. There was a thaw, then a flood, then spring was behind the barn. And with it come Gracie Everdeen. And, wherever she’d been, she come back sad and sorrowful, and you can bet me, the heart in her poor bosom was cleave in two.”

There was something in the simple country way he put his words together that painted a picture for me. I could see the fallow fields, the drab sky, the melting snow, and the tempestuous, strange creature that was Gracie Everdeen, victim of unbridled passions, spurning the mother who broke her heart, the lover who betrayed her.

“But she didn’t come back to the village that spring, did she?” I was remembering Mrs. O’Byrne’s part of the story.

“No, sir, she didn’t. She was stayin’ over t’ Saxony, but she wouldn’t cross the river. Wouldn’t come over the Lost Whistle for hide nor hair.”

“Why not?”

He ducked his head briefly, and faltered in his story. Then, regaining himself, “Who knows? Womenfolk do peculiar things sometimes. Roger Penrose heard she was over there, and he rode out and begged her to come home. Time after time, but she wouldn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t Roger cross the bridge?”

“Wasn’t supposed to. It’s the rule. In the seventh year the Harvest Lord’s not to go beyond the village boundaries. Same for the Corn Maiden. But Grace, on her side, she’d never set foot to the bridge. And Roger’d never go to her.”

“But he did, finally.” I told him what I had learned from Mrs. O’Byrne about the night Roger had galloped across the river and carried her to the Cornwall side, and that Mrs. O’Byrne had wanted to fire Gracie for immorality.

Amys stared at me, speechless, then spat again. “‘Tain’t true! Roger never touched her that night!”

“How do you know?”

“I-” He stopped uncertainly, glanced quickly at Bert, the bartender, then hollered for more nuts. When Bert had gone to the far end of the bar, Amys continued in a hoarse whisper, “Roger never laid a finger to her. The Harvest Lord can’t have relations with no girl before Harvest Home. It’s against the ways. Anyhow, Roger met her just before the Corn Play. That was poor Gracie’s last chance. He rode back and Tamar was crowned in her place. Next day, the day before Kindlin’ Night, when they burn the scarecrows, the Widow Fortune buggies over to talk to Gracie. She come back without her, too. So Tamar goes to Harvest Home.”

“To do what?”

“Hell, son, don’t ask me all these questions. I’m tryin’ to tell you. Roger goes to Harvest Home as the Lord, and Tamar goes as his Maiden.”

“Goes where?”

“To the woods. To Soakes’s Lonesome.”

“Harvest Home is celebrated in the woods?”

“The seventh one is, always. But then, Gracie comes too.”

“And was a disruptive influence.”

“Who says?”

“The ladies. Mrs. Green, Mrs. Zalmon-”

“Damn old biddies. If she was, the Lord God he knows.”

“Then what happened?”

“Two days later, Irene Tatum finds her poor body in the river. Thrown herself off the Lost Whistle. I heard, and I went to toll thrice times thrice. But Mr. Deming comes and says I can’t. He tells me to dig a hole.”

“Outside the cemetery.”

“Mr. Buxley-he says he can’t read service for a suicide, and here come all the elders carryin’ a pine box, with Gracie inside, and they set it in the hole; then Mr. Deming in his black suit tells me to fill it in, and they go away. Not a soul there for the funeral. Mrs. Everdeen packs up and leaves town for the shame, and there’s the end of it.”

“You buried her?”

He turned his head quickly and used the spittoon again. After a moment he said, “Buried her beyond the fence, where you see her stone. Where she lies without, in disgrace, and Roger lies within, in honor. And herself runs the post office and makes fast and loose with anything in pants.” He clutched my sleeve and spoke fiercely. “Don’t you listen to folks. Gracie was a fine girl. And a beauty, don’t you forget. Pretty as spring, a reg’lar fairy, that was Grace.”

Bert came and collected the glasses, obliterating with his rag the wet rings left on the bar.

Amys tottered off his stool, a sad, forlorn look on his wrinkled face. “Listen to me, sir. I loved Grace, and I never forgot her, even though they’d like to. Sometimes when I ring thrice times thrice, like when Mrs. Mayberry died, I tell Gracie that’s for her.”

He touched his hat brim, thanked me for letting him wet his whistle, and took up his broom and left.

I finished my drink, trying to piece together the threads of his story of the unfortunate Gracie Everdeen, and chalked it up to a case of unrequited love.

When I approached the church again, Amys was tolling six o’clock. Above the bronzy notes of the bell, the voices of the choir sounded, floating out through the vestibule door and hanging soft in the air. The sun was dropping behind the post office, and long shadows had crept across the Common, making the circles on the grass more pronounced.

I took a few moments to step into the church and sit in one of the pews, looking up at the choir loft over the doors, where the girls held their sheets of music in pairs and sang the lovely melody. Maggie was at the organ, watching in the little mirror over the keyboard as Mrs. Buxley conducted the voices, while, in the upper corner of the loft, the Widow Fortune sat leaning her head on her hand, lost in some private reverie.

The song ended, and the church was perfectly still for a moment. Then the girls moved from their places,