Harvest Home

had said: today was a new beginning.

I turned left onto Main Street and continued in the direction of the Common. The Widow Fortune’s house, several blocks along Main, was almost obscured behind a corn crop so high it hid a man’s hat. I had heard Robert Dodd say the old lady talked to the corn to make it grow, a concept I found fanciful, supposing plants must grow as they chose, or as they received sustenance; but growing because someone talked to them…

I went down the lane at the side of the small, gabled house and into the dooryard, where I set the sack of buns on the back-porch steps, next to a pair of worn shoes. Beside these was a bunch of flowers in a leaky pail. A large black iron pot sat over a smoking fire in the dooryard, the contents simmering and making thick plopping sounds. Savoring the aroma, I discovered other smells, the pungent musk of damp earth, the dusty tang of broken flowerpots and manured trowels, a tinge of fertilizer. Good country smells. Everywhere I looked, I sensed an earthy richness, an appreciation of growing things, plant life and animal life, all of life. There were patches of garden under the window sills and, along the fence, a bed of cabbages, their pale green heads set in perfect alignment, the rows meticulously tended. No weed, I felt sure, would dare show its face under the Widow Fortune’s careful scrutiny.

My eyes traveled along the rows, to discover the old lady herself, kneeling among the cabbages. Oblivious to my arrival, she held herself upright, with bowed head, her hands clasped over her breast, and I guessed she might be praying, though why in a cabbage patch I had no idea. The soft morning light lay about her in a wash of water- color tints, all mist and mother-of-pearl, violet and gray and rose; and observing the motionless form, I thought, Here is someone who appreciates the joys of a solitary contemplation of the day. Presently she lifted her head, and, still not noticing me, she rose, digging her fisted hands in the small of her back to ease it, and scanning the sky overhead, lost in some cloudy reverie. Then, lifting her skirts that she had pinned up for purposes of convenience, she peered at the ground around her and spoke.

“Come, now, slow one, have a bite.” She bent and broke off some cabbage leaves and dropped them beside a large brown stone at her feet. As though by some feat of sorcery, the stone moved. I blinked, then realized it was a large tortoise whose shell resembled a stone. While it proceeded to eat the cabbage leaves, she bent down and spoke to it like a witch to her familiar, then straightened, her black form real and corporeal amid the dissolving mists.

“Good morning,” I called at last. She turned, peering at me through round, silver-rimmed spectacles, waiting for me to approach. “Watch your hoofs,” she said in a forthright tone, “don’t tread on my cabbages.” A sizable woman, she presented a handsome figure, Junoesque in its stateliness: large head, straight neck, full shoulders. Though time had tugged her here and there, causing the neck to sag under the firm chin, her skin was pulled tight and shone with a robust glow over the rosy flesh. How old was she? I wondered again. Age had not seemed to wither her; there was nothing crone-like in her appearance; her constitution appeared firm, her heart stout, and if her teeth were not her own she did not yet walk with a cane.

If someone had driven up at that moment and asked me my first, surest impression of the Widow Fortune, I would have said comfortable and motherly.

“You’re an early riser,” she said briskly.

“‘Carpe diem,’” I quoted, watching where I walked.

“Can’t speak French,” she replied; the merry twinkle in her eye told me she knew it wasn’t French.

“‘Seize the day,’” I translated.

“It’s the early mornin’ that’s got the gold in its mouth, as they say. I like to be up before all the trammel starts.”

When she spoke, it was with a firm authority, a distinct voice that knew what things were about. Listening, she had a gentle, luminous expression, humorous but not mocking.

“Beth sent you some cinnamon buns for breakfast.” I nodded toward the back-porch steps.

“Well, now, that’s neighborly. I’ve got the kettle on; let me put the cow to pasture, and you’ll come and have a cup of tea with me.” It sounded less an invitation than a command performance, and I found myself nodding in accord. Her step was spry as I followed her along a footworn path to the barn, where she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, herding a large brown-and-white cow into a small pasture, carefully setting in the fence bar to keep the animal out of the corn.

“Brown Swiss.” She spoke with a touch of pride, explaining that the cow, whose name was Caesar’s Wife, was descended from the first herd of Brown Swiss brought from Switzerland to New England almost three centuries before. Caesar’s Wife was the Widow’s treasure.

She led me back the way we had come, stopping to stir the boiling pot with a large wooden paddle. “Hog,” she said briefly, and I watched the pieces of meat and fat rise to the surface. “One of Irene Tatum’s. Slaughtered it myself last week. Most mysterious thing! Hog had two stomachs, if you can believe it.” She gave me a look. “Guess what I found in one of ‘em? A collar button.” Her look sharpened, as though testing me. “Wouldn’t you call that an augury?”

“I guess I might,” I said, laughing.

“Sure you would. Anybody would. But what sort?” she asked in a dismayed voice, looking at the sky again. The pig, she went on, had been put down for salt pork, and she had made sausage with her own casings. The leavings went for blood puddings, and now all that remained was the head which was boiling in the pot; that would be for scrapple.

She pulled out the paddle, shook it, and laid it aside. Now she took a splint basket from a peg on the wall and marched to a corner of the garden where she began examining her plants.

“Only a minute,” she called, snipping several sprigs with the large silver shears suspended from her waist by a length of black ribbon. Someone was sure to have iced tea at the fair, she said as I came up behind her, and a sprig of mint always went nice. She held it out for me to inhale its cool fragrance, then cut some more and offered me another sniff; “Pennyroyal. Good for colic.” When she had done, she led me to the back door, took off her boots, and coaxed her feet into the worn shoes. Enjoining me to wipe my feet, she showed me into the kitchen. She laid the basket on the table and indicated a chair where I might be seated. While I put aside my sketchbook and drawing case, she tucked the cinnamon buns in the warming oven, put out a second cup and saucer beside the one already in evidence, poured tea, brought butter from the refrigerator, and a pot of honey.

The kitchen was low-ceilinged, small, and comfortable, and furnished with the clutter of a lifetime. One counter, on which sat a score of green bottles, with a scattering of corks and labels, was a small bottling works. Another held several shallow crocks whose contents looked as if they had only recently come from the oven: the blood puddings she had spoken of. A large tin kettle bubbled merrily on the stove. She spooned some of its contents up, blew on it, then tasted. It was not to her apparent liking, for she made a face, then bustled about, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, until the brew was more to her satisfaction.

“How’s your family?” she asked, pursuing these small homely details.

“Fine.” I noticed her hands, large working hands, yet marked by their own simple grace, shapely, tapering fingers and smooth oval nails. “Except for Kate-she’s been having asthma attacks.”

“I know. Asthma.” She spoke the word sharply, marking such a condition with her personal disdain. “That child oughtn’t to have asthma.” She took out the buns and set them on a plate before me. “Help yourself.” Her nimble fingers separated the small harvest of herbs in the basket, tying them in bunches and hanging them from nails set into the edge of a shelf over the sink. Everywhere were jars and other containers, filled with various herbs, stalks, blossoms, seeds-what appeared to be an entire pharmacopoeia of country cures. “What’s that used for?” I inquired, sniffing at the kettle on the stove which gave off an aromatic, almost exotic essence.

“For what ails you.”

I wondered if she was bottling the concoction to sell at the fair, medicine-show style. As though reading my mind, she explained that she did a satisfactory back-door business; hardly a soul in the village didn’t stop by one time or another for one of her herbal infusions.

Her eye fell on my sketchbook. “How’s the paintin’ comin’?” I assured her I was working hard at it, and had a New York gallery swindled into handling my work.

“You any good?”

“Probably not.”

“You’re a liar.” She beamed behind her glasses. “Let me see.” She leafed through the book, murmuring approval; then uttered a little gasp as her hand flew to her breast. I saw she had come upon the page of tombstones I had drawn yesterday. “My, my, ‘course you’re good. Dear me. Clemmon’s stone.” Gazing at the