Fields of Home (8 page)

“Wastin’! Wastin’!” Grandfather exploded. “There’s plenty good nuts and bolts right there at your hand. Throwed ’em there myself just t’other day. If you can’t find ’em, Ralphie’ll find ’em for you.” Then he slammed the sharpened scythe blade onto the floor and stamped out of the carriage house.

As soon as Grandfather had gone, Uncle Levi winked at me. “Kind of balky on us fixing up that cussed hossrake, wa’n’t he? And we ain’t going to be able to tie his ears together neither. Calc’late we got to cook up some other way around it. Let’s see now. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, ain’t it? Thomas, he has his troubles with the Sabbath. It’s agin his scruples to work on it, and he won’t set you a job of work to do on it—that is, excepting chores. And sometimes he’s a mite careless ’bout the line where chores leaves off and a job of work begins. Never heard tell of him raising much ruction if somebody done him a job of work on the Sabbath without him knowing of it. Might happen we could get Thomas out of the way tomorrow, and run a little hossrake mending in on the chores.”

“It’s going to take a lot of nuts and bolts and things to fix it,” I said. “Do you think I’ll find enough of the right kind among the stuff here on the bench?”

“What you think I’m going to the village for? I got plenty stove bolts for the sweeps right down there in that locked drawer.” As he spoke, Uncle Levi unbuttoned the cuff on one of his shirt sleeves. When he turned it back, the inside was all marked over with figures. “There they be,” he told me. “Don’t allow I missed so much as cotter pin or washer. Keep your nose clean while I’m gone, and don’t rare into this mess of junk too hard. It’ll take a month of Sundays to get it all sorted out. I was scared Thomas would set you to mowing, and your hands ain’t fit for it right now.”

It was more than two hours before Uncle Levi came back from Lisbon Falls. By that time, I’d made a pretty good hole in the stuff on the workbench, and Grandfather hadn’t once come up from whatever he was doing down at the beehives. He did come up when Uncle Levi drove back into the yard, and was standing by the front wheel of the spring wagon when I went to unhitch Old Nell. “There you be, Thomas,” Uncle Levi said, as he passed the reins to me and a flat package to Grandfather. “Them ought to hold smoke enough to make every bee in Lisbon township peaceable. Seen ’em when I was looking for carriage bolts, and calc’lated you might have some good use to put ’em to.”

“Gorry sakes! Gorry sakes alive, Levi!” Grandfather sang out, as he fumbled a little bellows out of the package. It was made of brown leather, with bright tips and handles. “Shouldn’t ought to have spent so much money on a tarnal pair of bellows. Little court plaster would have mended up the old ones so’s they’d do me all right. Gorry sakes alive! Ain’t them beauties! Ralphie, you unhitch the hoss whilst I go set my smoke pot a-burning. I got a . . . ” By that time he was so far toward the bee shop that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Uncle Levi winked at me again. “Calc’lated he might have a few bees that would need some smoking about now. No sense starting into the fields afore noon, and this’ll give us time to do a decent job on them handsweeps.” I’d noticed a good-sized box under the seat, with a Lewiston Sunday paper laid in over the top. There was a roll of something wrapped in brown paper. It was about three feet long and as big around as my head. Uncle Levi climbed down, rolled the round package out from under the seat, and pulled the box to the edge of the wagon. “Found about everything we’ll need, ’cepting histe handle and shafts, and I allow we’re smart enough betwixt us to make them out of hardwood. I’ll fetch this stuff to the carriage house while you unharness Old Nell.”

I was just leading her away toward the barn when he called, “Hold up a minute, Ralphie! By hub, I come nigh forgetting it. I fetched you something for them sore hands. Catch!” He tossed a package, and as it wobbled toward me, end over end, a pair of brown gloves spilled out right at my feet. They were as soft as a woman’s kid gloves, and as smooth as satin, both inside and out. When I tried to tell him how much I liked them, he grumbled, “No thank you’s; no thank you’s! Got ’em for you; not for thank you’s,” and went off to the carriage house.

9

Uncle Levi Teaches Me to Swing a Scythe

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unharnessed Old Nell, I told myself that, after my promise to Mrs. Littlehale, it wouldn’t be honest of me to leave Grandfather until he had all his hay in. But, all the time I knew I was going to stay because I liked to work with Uncle Levi. The box he’d brought from the village was nowhere in sight when I hurried back to the carriage house, but he was down on his hands and knees, rolling the other package way back under the workbench. “Screen wire for Millie,” he said when he looked up and saw me. “Flies in the house like to drive her crazy. Been yammering at me for going on five–six years but, with one thing and another when I been down, I never got around to making ’em.”

“If the horserake doesn’t take any longer than I think it will, maybe we can start on them tomorrow,” I said.

“Mayhaps! Mayhaps! But, first, we got to see what we can do with Thomas. He ain’t going to sit around here peaceable while we’re fixing up that hossrake. Thomas, he don’t cotton to machinery. Wouldn’t have that cussed old rattletrap of a mowing machine around here if he could hire hand mowers. Good scythe men is getting hard to find.”

“He has quite a little trouble keeping any kind of men, doesn’t he?” I asked.

For the first time, Uncle Levi looked at me as if he was peeved. Before he answered, he shoved the roll of screen wire to the farthest corner under the bench, and climbed to his feet. By the time he was up, he seemed more sad than mad. He reached one hand out and laid it on my shoulder but, instead of looking at me, he looked out across the fields. “Thomas never learnt to get along with other folks,” he said at last. “’Tain’t that he don’t like ’em, Ralphie. He does. There ain’t a man living with more love in him than what Thomas has. Worshipped Father to the longest day he lived. No man ever loved the land more’n Thomas loves this old farm—every stone and stump of it. You seen him with critters; tender as ary woman. But he has a devilish hard time showing it to people. A crossgrain in the timber someplace. Treats worst them he likes best. Ain’t you heard him jaw and row at Millie?”

“She jaws and rows at him just about as bad,” I said.

“Being around Thomas, it gets to be a habit. There’s times it’s tarnation hard not to row back at him.”

I knew that, but I didn’t want to say it, so I said, “I don’t think Millie likes anybody but you very well.”

“Millie?” he said. “Why do you calc’late she’s put up with Thomas all these years? Millie don’t like strangers. Fetched up that way. Her mother lived like a hermit—way up on Rocky Dundy, t’other side Lisbon Village.”

“Was her father a hermit too?” I asked.

“Don’t nobody know. Her mother married a man off to Portland when Millie come to work for Thomas.”

Uncle Levi jerked his hand down off my shoulder. “Great day of judgment!” he said. “Here we stand gossiping like a pair of widow women. This ain’t mending handsweeps, is it? Mark them pieces of clear pine racked up beneath the ceiling? Them’s for Millie’s screen frames; had ’em all ripped out and ready to put together four–five–six years now.” He chuckled a few notes behind his mustache. “Have to devil her a little ’bout the flies, come dinner time.”

Before we started on the handsweeps, Uncle Levi fished a ring of keys out of his overalls’ pocket and unlocked the drawers on the right-hand side of the workbench. The top two were filled with tools. There was a place made for each one, and they were all in their places. Every metal part was covered with a film of oil, and there wasn’t a rust spot anywhere. The two lower drawers were divided into sections, with sliding trays, and each section held a different size of nut, bolt, screw, or washer. “Have to keep ’em locked up,” he told me, “else Thomas would have ’em scattered from Dan to Beersheba. It’s a God’s wonder when he can lay his hand on a wrench. Drops ’em whereever he uses ’em; got four–five-half-a-dozen planted in every cussed field on the place. Now you can go to cutting shanks on these teeth, if you’ve a mind to, while I turn ’em down with the spoke shave. Set your calipers a dite bigger’n the hole so’s they’ll fit good and snug.”

I felt terrible when I had to say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what calipers are.”

“Little fellow there in the top drawer,” he told me. “Looks like a bowlegged cowboy. That’s the one. Open and close the spraddle with that little burr nut on the side. That’s the ticket. Set it just a dite bigger’n the holes in the sweep rail.”

As soon as I saw it, I remembered that Father used to have one like it in his tool chest. I could remember having seen him use it before I ever started school. He’d made an old sewing machine over into a wood lathe, with a big flywheel and spindles. When he turned things on it, he used to measure them with the caliper. As I set the width of the hole, I could see that old lathe of Father’s as plainly as if I’d been looking back ten days instead of ten years. The flywheel was big—almost like a grindstone—and he got it going fast with the foot treadles before he began to cut with the chisels. I could remember his making Mother a whatnot with it. I’d stepped back from the handsweep, and was looking at Grandfather’s grindstone, when Uncle Levi asked, “What’s biting you, Ralphie? What you trying to figure out?”

“Nothing,” I said, “I was just remembering about a wood lathe Father once built out of an old sewing machine. It had a flywheel that looked like a grindstone. He’d get it turning real fast with the foot treadles, and then he’d turn out any shape he wanted with a chisel.”

“Hmff!” Uncle Levi said, came over, and gave the grindstone handle a twist. Then he shut one eye and watched it as it twirled around. “Hmff!” he said again. “’Pears to run pretty even. There’s treadles for it someplace; Thomas never uses ’em. Never grinds nothing less’n there’s some poor devil to turn the crank.” He looked along the wall over the top of his glasses. “There they be! S’posing we set it to spinning and see how true the center runs.”

We put the treadles on, and I got the stone whirling as fast as I could make my feet go. “True as gospel,” Uncle Levi said, as he squinted at it, “so long as you don’t push it too hard and make it gallop. Let me see now. ’Bout all we’re going to need is a dead center and a spring to hold it close up agin. I’ll file that bolt end into a hold-chuck while you hunt a spring. Get a good stout one; ’bout six or eight inches long.”

Within an hour, we’d rigged a little makeshift lathe onto the grindstone. It worked fine for the handsweep teeth, and Uncle Levi was careful to make every one of them just alike. After he’d calipered one of the shanks, he looked up at me, and said, “Charlie must have been a pretty good mechanic.”

“He was,” I said. “Father could make anything he wanted to out of anything he had.”

“Calc’late you take after him,” he said, and ran the chisel smoothly along the piece of kindling as he shaped the tooth. If he’d asked me right then to jump off the peak of the barn, I’d have been glad to do it for him.

We had the handsweeps fixed just as good as new, when Millie called dinner. And it was a good dinner, too, with a big piece of corned beef, boiled potatoes, cabbage, johnnycake, and another apple pie. It was a hot day, the windows were open, and there were quite a few flies in the kitchen. We weren’t any more than down at the table before Uncle Levi began swatting at them and shooing them off the corned beef. “Great day of judgment!” he snapped, as if they were worrying him to death. “Flies so tarnation thick around here a man has to blow his victuals afore the flies does! Millie, it’s a God’s wonder you wouldn’t spread a little molasses on a piece of brown paper and catch these pesky things. How’s a man going to enjoy his victuals when he daresn’t open his mouth for fear of getting a fly in it?” Then he turned his head so he could wink at me without her seeing him.

“Molasses, hmff!” Millie snapped right back at him. “How many hogsheads of molasses you cal’late it would take to catch all the devilish flies in Lisbon township? Ain’t nothing to stop ’em coming in here, is there? It’s your own cussed fault if you don’t like flies. Where’s them screens you been promising me ever since I come to this infernal flytrap?”

“Flytrap! Flytrap!” Grandfather exploded. “Who says it’s a flytrap? This house ain’t never had a screen on it, and for more’n a hundred years it’s been good enough for all the other womenfolks that’s lived in it. Screens, hmff! Tarnal nuisances! Won’t have ’em! Won’t have ’em, I tell you! If this house ain’t good enough for you just like it is, go somewheres else! Screens, hmff!”

Grandfather’s rowing must have made the old red rooster curious. He flew up onto the window sill behind Uncle Levi, and twisted his head from side to side as he looked around the kitchen. I didn’t want the wrangle about screens to go any further, so I said, “We’ve got a visitor.”

“Great day of judgment!” Uncle Levi sang out, as he turned toward the rooster. “By hub, there’s one smart critter on the place! First day I been here, and a’ready he knows there’s something more than salt pork on the table.”

“Ain’t nothing the matter with salt pork!” Grandfather snapped, but I noticed that he’d taken a good big slice of corned beef.

“Ain’t nothing the matter with bread and water,” Uncle Levi said, as he cut a little piece of corned beef and spread hot mustard on it, “but it’s devilish poor belly stuffing for a man in a hayfield. There you be, Beelzebub! That’ll put a curl in your tail feathers.”

The old rooster leaned forward and grabbed the piece of corned beef off the end of Uncle Levi’s fork. It was a small mouthful for a man, but a big one for a rooster. He had to make two tries before he could swallow it and, each time, he ran his neck out like a goose reaching through a fence. Then he cocked his head to one side, clicked his bill—so that it sounded almost exactly the way Uncle Levi’s lips had when he looked at the breakfast—and shook his head like a dog with water in its ears. For a minute, he stood blinking his eyes, as if he were trying to make up his mind whether the corned beef was worth the mustard. Then he turned toward the hens in the dooryard, and called, “Tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck.” Before Millie brought the pie, Uncle Levi had fed the rooster a dozen pieces or more of corned beef, and he put a good dollup of hot mustard on every one of them, but nobody mentioned screens again.

We had a pretty good afternoon, working in the orchard. Grandfather scolded me two or three times for being awkward or slow, but most of the time Uncle Levi kept me working with him. We took both scythes and the three handsweeps with us, but Grandfather didn’t use the sweeps very much. When we climbed over the stonewall from the pasture lane, he was as excited as a race horse at the starting post. “By gorry, Ralphie,” he called out, “I and you’ll show ’em what kind of logs makes wide shingles! Come on, Levi! We’ll get her all in the windrow afore supper time.” He dropped his scythe in the long grass by the wall, grabbed one of the sweeps I had over my shoulder, and began flinging hay like a hen scratching for corn.

Uncle Levi didn’t say anything, but picked up Grandfather’s scythe and kept walking slowly toward the nearest tree. I didn’t know just what I ought to do, but I wanted to be with Uncle Levi, so I started to follow him. I’d only gone a few yards when Grandfather called, “Ralphie! Ralphie! Time flies! Pitch in here alongside of me!”

I should have watched to see how Grandfather was handling the sweep, but I didn’t. They looked to me like little horserakes, and I had supposed that you’d drag them the same way, so I set mine down at the edge of the field and began pulling it along. “What in time and tarnation you trying to do now,” Grandfather yelled after me; “play hoss? Get your backsides behind you and go at it man fashion!”

It made me madder to have him scold me when Uncle Levi was there than when we were alone. My whole head felt as if it were catching afire, and I had just snapped out, “I’m not . . . ” when Uncle Levi called, “Thomas, the grass under these trees is still greener’n a gourd. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and if it ain’t got out where the sun can get at it, it’ll sour on the ground afore Monday.”

“’Tain’t no wonder! Tain’t no wonder!” Grandfather called back, as he dropped his sweep and almost ran toward the trees. “Ralphie mowed under that one, and he wabbed the grass all up into hog wallows. Never seen a boy so helpless with a snath and scythe.”

Unless I dragged it, I was about as helpless with a handsweep as with a scythe but, while Grandfather and Uncle Levi stood talking under the apple tree, I did the best I could. After a few minutes, they walked on to another tree or two. Then Grandfather took his scythe and hurried off to some trees that we hadn’t mowed under at the far side of the orchard. He hadn’t been gone two minutes before Uncle Levi called, “Ralphie.” His voice was just loud enough to reach me.

I put my sweep on my shoulder and went over where he was. He wasn’t hurrying at all. He sort of rolled from side to side as he stepped forward, and his arms and the big rake moved back and forth in perfect rhythm. After a little while, he noticed me watching him, and said, “Slow and steady goes far in a day, Ralphie. Thomas, he’s a fast starter, but he peters out tolerable quick. With one of these cussed things, it’s a waste of time to hurry. Take care Thomas don’t set you too fast a pace, Ralphie. You ain’t had all your growth yet.”