Weeds

by Edith Summers Kelley

In the dooryard she saw the last chickens straggling up one by one, obeying the homing instinct that brought them always at night to the roost. Already the turkeys were perched in a row on the ridgepole of the shed, their big bodies outlined darkly against the sky. Now and then one of them would stretch out its long neck and look warily about to make sure that all was well. The last turkey flew up and joined the line, and with little chirrs of content they settled themselves to sleep. The dog in the corner of the porch sprawled luxuriously, and curled upon her friend's warm flank the cat slept. It was her favorite bed.

Standing wrapped in the growing twilight she felt herself like these humbler creatures an outgrowth of the soil, its life her life even as theirs. Quiet, peace and calm, these things belonged to them, a part of their heritage. These things in less measure her own life had to offer. These things at last she was ready to accept.

Since her reconciliation with Jerry in the joyful moment of their baby's triumph over death a new spirit had entered into her. Meltingly in that moment she had known by what strong ties she was bound to him. Convincingly she had realized the uselessness of struggle. Through the weeks that followed, long thoughts stayed with her as she went about doing her housework and she saw more and more clearly the path that the future laid out before her. Like a dog tied by a strong chain, what had she to gain by continually pulling at the leash? What hope was there in rebellion for her or hers? The boys would grow up to bury their youth in the tobacco field, as Jerry had done. Little Annie would be in years to come a prim and dull old maid like Luella or a harassed mother like herself. Which fate was worse, she asked herself, and did not dare to try to form an answer. She had grown timid about many things since the days of her forthright girlhood. Peace was better than struggle, peace and a decent acquiescence before the things which had to be. At the thought her sunken chest rose a little and the shoulders fell into less drooping lines; and there was a certain dignity in the movement with which she threw a long wrung sheet over her shoulder and stalking with it to the line spread it out to flap in the March winds.

Now, as she stood watching the pale sunset melt into darkness and listening to the distant bleating of the sheep, she told herself again that she was through with struggle and question, since for her nothing could ever come of them but discord. Henceforth she would accept what her life had to offer, carrying her burden with what patience and fortitude she could summon. She would go on for her allotted time bearing and nursing babies and rearing them as best she could. And when her time of child bearing was over she would go back to the field, like the other women, and set tobacco and worm and top tobacco, shuck corn and plant potatoes. Already people were beginning to call her "Aunt Judy." Some day she would be too old to work in the field and would sit all day in the kitchen in winter and on the porch in summer shelling beans or stripping corn from the cob. She would be "granmammy" then.

She felt that she would never again seek estrangement from Jerry. Divided, their life was meaningless, degrading and intolerably dismal. Together there would be if not happiness at least peace and a measure of mutual comfort and sustaining strength by virtue of which they might with some calm and self-respect support the joint burden of their lives. Peace in his house was a gift that she wished to offer him, not out of a sense of duty, but as a free and spontaneous return for his gentle goodness, his devotion to her and her children, his loving disregard of all her shortcomings as housekeeper, wife, and mother. Of this generous bounty she had received without stint, and she felt that at last it had brought forth response in her as grass springs up where warm rains have fallen.

She heard a step and turning her head saw her husband coming up the path. Even in the half darkness her eye, accustomed to all his moods, discerned in his hunched shoulders and heavy gait something more than the daily drag of the soil.

"I got bad news, Judy," he said, as he stepped shamblingly onto the porch and stood beside her. "They found Uncle Jabez dead in his bed to-day—Aunt Selina found him."

"Uncle Jabez!" was all she could say; and a great void seemed to spread itself around her. Through the void she heard Jerry's voice coming as if from a long distance.

"Yes, it was the flu, I reckon. Nobody hadn't seen him for three four days. An', Judy, I won't never be able to forgive myse'f. Tuesday I was by his place an' he said he wa'n't feelin' a bit good an' strung me out some o' that Bible stuff o' hisn about how the Lord had made his flesh an' skin old an' broke his bones. He looked bad too. He said he reckoned it was the flu. Thursday I was past there agin a-chasin' the roan caow, an' I'd ought to a stopped in, an' I thought of it too. But the caow was a-gittin' fu'ther away every minute an' I kep' on a-goin' after her. An' if I'd on'y a stopped in he might a been saved, an' anyway he wouldn't a died there like a dawg with nobody near to turn a hand for him. It seems awful to think I never went in, don't it, Judy?"

She did not answer. In that moment the manner of his death and Jerry's negligence were nothing to her. All she could think of was that he was dead, that she would never again watch him warm his great hands over her stove, see the fine lines quiver about his mouth and hear the deep bass rumble of his voice, never again listen to his careless singing as he loitered boylike across fields, soaking in the sunshine, tasting the calm of the twilight, stalking giantlike through the light of the moon, and in the dark nights knowing the path with his feet as an old horse knows the road home. In that moment she realized that to know that he was dead was to fill her world with emptiness. What light and color had remained for her in life faded out before this grim fact into a vast, gray, spiritless expanse. Now for the first time she knew what his mere presence in her world had meant to her. The things that remained to her to raise her life above the daily treadmill were the things that she held in common with him: joy in the beauty of the world, laughter and contemplation. These things no one but he had ever shared with her. He had been the one real companion that she had ever known. Now he was gone and she was alone. A weight like a great, cold stone settled itself upon her vitals; and as she gazed out over the darkening country it seemed to stretch endlessly, endlessly, like her future life, through a sad, dead level of unrelieved monotony.