4
Sarah continued to feel ailing despite pink powders, herb tea, and a highly advertised variety of vegetable compound.
The work was thrown completely upon the shoulders of Early Ann. Stud would have been blind not to have noticed how well she bore up under this burden and how gladly she cared for Sarah. The girl could cook as fine a meal as he had ever tasted, and be as gay and fresh after hours over the cook stove as when she came clicking down the stairs with the chamber pots at four in the morning.
She never asked Stud to kill chickens for her. She went to the chicken house herself, chased down a pair of plump friers, and chopped off their heads without more ado. These she scalded, plucked, singed, drew, washed in cold well water, rolled in egg and flour, and fried to a crisp golden brown. It made Stud's mouth fairly water to think of those chicken dinners: hot biscuits, mashed potatoes, lots of chicken gravy, coffee with Jersey cream, and hot mince pie for dessert.
Such roasts, fries and stews! Such homemade bread, dumplings, pies and cakes! Her cooking was better than hotel dinners, Stud averred. There was a tang to everything she cooked and everything she did.
Stud had never before been completely aware of the work a woman must do around a farm. He had rather thought that Sarah was having the best of the bargain all these years. Now, perversely, he was conscious of every task a farm-wife must perform.
He noticed how from Monday morning when she started pumping cistern water for the week's washing, until Saturday night when she put over water for baths Early Ann never sat down to rest. He noticed particularly how clean she kept the house and milk house; how shining and sweet-smelling were the milk pails and separator; how the meals were always on the dot and the dishes cleared away promptly after the meal. She canned, churned, carried in cords of wood.
Stud found himself wondering if there were not some way to heat flatirons save over a roaring cook stove. Somehow the mountains of dishes seemed unnecessary.
But Early Ann did not complain. She sang as she worked.
Watching her now, as with hair and dress blowing she fed five hundred snowy chickens, Stud told himself she was a "darned good hired girl and would make some lucky fellow a good wife."
The phone rang two longs and three shorts the following Saturday. It was Gus calling jubilantly from Janesville. He had squandered a quarter to inform the family that Napoleon was not only the greatest Jersey bull in the county, but, according to the judges who awarded him a silver loving cup, the greatest bull of any variety. Teddy, the stallion, had won a blue ribbon, while Sarah's raspberry preserves had been judged the best in their class. Peter's pumpkin was three pounds and four ounces heavier than its nearest rival, and Gus had won a kewpie doll for Early Ann by hitting a nigger baby with a baseball.
Stud could hear the subdued exclamations from every kitchen on the party line.
"But I didn't get nothing in the wood-chopping contest," Gus complained. "I got licked seven-ways-for-Sunday by a lady from East Fulton."
The family celebrated with homemade ice cream eaten in Sarah's bedroom.
That evening at dusk a storm arose. Lightning quivered along the horizon, and a wind sprang up. Early Ann, throwing her apron over her head to protect it from the spattering drops, hurried down to the old mill to get in a late brood of chicks raised by the fierce old one-legged hen who every summer stole her nest.
As she reached the doorway of the mill Joe Valentine grabbed her around the waist and put a large, hairy hand over her mouth. He pulled her into the dark building and began talking to her in a hoarse whisper.
"You're my step daughter," he said. "You're coming with me."
She bit his fingers in fury and cried out for help, but the moaning of the wind and the rush of the rain muffled her words. She forgot all the nice ways and pretty talk she had learned from Sarah Brailsford and kicked and fought and swore.
"I'll scratch your eyes out, Joe!"
"You're my girl. You ran away from me." He nursed his bitten hand.
"I'll tell everybody how you treated Maw."
"Come along now." He tried to pull her toward the door, then stopped. "I was good to your maw," he said.
"You killed her," the girl cried. "You made her take in washings, and ... and worse."
"You can't teach an old cat new tricks."
"You killed her," Early Ann shouted.
"Shut your mouth, you little bastard," Joe said.
He tried to kiss her and she began to fight again. He slapped her face methodically a dozen times.
"You're my girl," Joe said. "You're my step daughter, and you ain't eighteen yet."
"I am eighteen," she panted. "Let me go, Joe." She sunk her teeth into his arm while he screamed.
"Now you're going to get it," he said. He ripped her dress and bent her backward until she thought he would break her back. Then she went limp and did not fight any more, but nothing happened. A moment later he flung her away.
"You ain't any good to me, either," he said with a great, wistful sigh. She saw his face in a flash of lightning. There was no lust there nor anger. A cat rubbed against her leg purring loudly.
She went out past the man who did not try to stop her. She hurried through the rain toward the hollow of lantern light which was approaching.
"Are you all right, Early Ann?" Stud cried. He came running and held up the lantern to look at her. He saw the torn dress and disheveled hair.
"Who was it?" he cried. "Where is he?"
She shook her head.
"You know, but you won't tell."
"Yes."
He pushed past her angrily and went into the mill holding the lantern high. He snatched up a piece of iron pipe and plunged through the dark rooms shouting. A cat rubbed against him, a big black fellow. Stud heard laughter out in the storm, hurried out into the rain, but could find no one.
In the kitchen once more he threw off his wet jacket, hung up the lantern, took Early Ann by the shoulders and tried to make her meet his eyes.
"You're not my daughter," he said. "I ... I could...."
"No, Mr. Brailsford, please!" She was crying quietly.
He let his hands drop from her shoulders, turned and looked out through the black, dripping window toward the lake. He could hear the waves rushing up on the shore and breaking, the wind soughing through the elms and maples. He thought of Sarah lying pale and weak on her bed, and he thought of the robust girl standing in the lamp light behind him.
Very deliberately he left the kitchen and climbed the narrow, dark stairs to his bed.
BOOK THREE