Weeds

by Edith Summers Kelley

They named the little girl Annie.

The winter after she was born was a hard one with unusually frequent cold spells. In Scott County the weather is never very cold for long periods. Most of the time it is dull and cloudy, with dismal rains and deep, sticky mud underfoot. Sometimes, however, the wind sweeps icily from the north, freezes the mud, and sends the thermometer for a night or so down to zero.

In the house in the hollow the Blackfords had been protected from gales; but now they knew all the changes of the wind. Perched shakily on the top of the ridge, the flimsy little house rocked and strained before the raging northwesters and piercing northeasters. The loose-fitting window sashes rattled; the doors stirred uneasily. The bits of old rag carpet laid upon the floor rose in waves as the wind billowed under them. The unceiled house, no snugger than a wagon shed, let in wind and cold everywhere. The wind fluttered the towels over the wash bench and rattled the saucepans that hung on the wall beside the stove.

On cold, windy mornings, when Jerry got up to light the fire, the house was no warmer than the out of doors. The water bucket was frozen. The milk in the pans was crusted with ice. Cold boiled potatoes left over from the day before were frozen into rocks and eggs were cracked open. The slop bucket on the floor in the corner was frozen solid and the bucket sprung from the force of the expanding ice.

On such mornings it took a long time to get things thawed out so that they could have breakfast; and even the fire did not have much effect on the icy atmosphere. If the wind was from the west it created such a strong draught that it drew all the heat up the chimney. If it was from the east, the stove drew badly and belched forth intermittent clouds of smoke and spatterings of ashes. The fuel, too, was not of a sort that makes much heat. The tobacco growers take no thought for the morrow in the matter of wood. The wood is cut each day as it is needed, frequently by the women. It is usually green saplings or half rotted fence rails. These latter are often sodden from recent rains and have to be dried out in the oven to make them burn at all. When at last they do burn they give only a faint glow of heat.

Judith grew waspish when the fire would not burn. On Sundays, when Jerry was home from the stripping room, she raged at him for not providing better wood. He was churlish and disheartened because much of the tobacco that he was stripping had been bitten by frost. He snapped back at her and sulked and when she was not looking sneaked away to the kitchen of some neighbor who had a warmer house and a less irritable wife.

She was left alone in her prison with the chilly and restless children. On cold days she kept the two boys dressed in all their outdoor clothing, even to their mittens. When she took the little girl out of her cradle, she wrapped her in shawls and blankets.

Jerry had raised a patch of cane that year. He hauled up cane and stacked it all around the house to try to turn the wind. The cows, drawn by the smell of the cane, kept breaking through the rickety fence; and soon had it all eaten up. He stacked up more; but as fast as he stacked it, the cows broke in and ate it up. All around the house they left hoofprints and round, brown cakes of dung the size of a large dinner plate.

All day long for days together, as long as the cold spell lasted, the slop bucket stood frozen solid in the corner, anchored to the floor by a surrounding island of ice. When at last the thaw came and the ice melted, the leaky bucket, its bottom sprung outward, teetered unsteadily and slowly dribbled its dirty contents.