2
“More beans?” Mama asked me.
My mother, Aunt Carrie, and I were sitting at our kitchen table, at supper. On the big black Acme American six-griddle cookstove, a pot of beans was always simmering on a back burner. When times were easier, there was usual a hunk of sowbelly or fatback in the bean pot, for flavor. But lately, there didn’t seem to be more than beans to eat. Or dandelion greens.
“Please,” I said, “if we can spare it. Let’s all have some.”
Neither my mother nor my aunt spooned a second helping to their plates. It wasn’t because they weren’t hungry. Both of them would have starved to prosper me.
At noon, a meal we Vermonters called dinner, Mama often prepared cold baked-bean sandwiches between generous slabs of her homemade bread. For years, I’d toted those to school. Few offered to trade their sandwiches for mine, yet it didn’t bother me a mite. I was proud of whatever Mama stirred on her stove.
Maybe the kids at school were just plain too jealous of me to trade. That was my secret smile.
Earlier, at the Tanner place, I’d ducked my shirt under the pump to rinse away Ben’s blood. Bess had offered to wash it for me. But I thanked her and said there was no need. Mama had made the shirt herself, as she cut and stitched all of my clothes. Kids at school said things about that too, noticing that my shirts were plainer than my eats. We Shakers were Plain People. We needed no frills on our backs or on our plates.
As I forked in hot beans, Mama and Aunt Carrie seemed to be eyeing my shirt. I smelled questions in the oven. So I squeezed off the first shot.
“No, I didn’t go to school today. I hiked over the hill to Ben’s, to help him with his stud horse.”
“So,” said Aunt Carrie, in her churchy tone, “you missed your schooling again.”
“I’ll go soon.”
Pulling a dollar from out of my pocket, I unfolded it, giving it to Mama. “I earned a dollar. Ben likes my work.”
Mama didn’t reach out to take it, so Mr. George Washington just lay there on the gray boards, as wrinkled and tired as I felt.
“Robert,” said my mother, “please go to school tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow. Even though I want to.”
“How come?” Mama asked me.
“Well, not because I dislike school in general. I take to most all of it. Except for this guy called William Shakespeare. In English class, we only got one book, so we have to take turns standing up front and reading a play that doesn’t make a speck of sense to me. It’s called As You Like It … and I don’t like it.”
Mama smiled.
Aunt Carrie held her ground.
“Mr. Shakespeare, for my opinion, ought to title his play As You Hate It. I’d be pleasured to give him that idea, for free. The teacher I like so much, Miss Malcolm, told us he died. But if he had to stand up in English class and read that stuff out loud, you’d know what did him in.”
My mother laughed. “What’s the play about?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, chewing my beans, “it isn’t about anything … except two brothers, Oliver and Orlando. They’re fixing to sweet up their girlfriends, Celia and … and Rosie. Their main hobby is gallivanting around Mr. Arden’s Forest and touching stones. In fact, this guy Touchstone is also a Chester. On top of all that, there’s a Frederick guy who I think has a dog named Duke.”
“My,” said my mother, “for a boy who doesn’t attend school regular, you’ve near to mastered it all.”
Hearing her praise swelled out my chest an inch. Or maybe it was bean gas.
Tomorrow, I had already decided, As You Like It would have to limp along through Arden’s woods without me. No time to quit doing for Ben Tanner. Today had been bad on him.
After Mr. Haskell Gamp collected his settled mare and led her in the direction of town, toward Learning, Bess Tanner and I tended her husband. The wounds bled clean. Yet it was plain that Ben needed sewing. But before she threaded her needle, Mrs. Tanner smacked us with a surprise.
It was hard liquor.
Bess, I knew, was a solid and fearing Baptist, a white-ribbon lady who didn’t partake or approve of spirits. So, when Bess fetched a glass jug of mountain white, colorless as water, uncorked it, and offered a pull to her husband, I near fainted to her kitchen floor.
“Drink up, Benjamin,” she said. “Because the Almighty won’t expect you to take sober stitching. And neither do I.”
Ben drank. I did not. It was certain a shocker to see him do it, because Ben Tanner was as hard-shelled a Baptist as Learning could boast of. Tough hide and tender heart. His woman told him to put himself outside of a second swallow, and he lightened the jug again. Then she placed the handle of a wooden cook spoon crosswise in his mouth.
“Bite,” said Bess. “Bite it deep.”
As he sat in a kitchen chair, Ben nodded that he was ready for iodine and thread. And, stitch after pulled-tight and knotted stitch, he bore it as I knew he could. One by each.
Silently, as I held Ben to the chair, I counted the stitches. He took thirty-seven without a whimper. And I knew it hurt Bess more to piece him together. His white hair was sweaty wet, a shoulder now stained brown with iodine, his face reddened with the pain.
“You’re not much,” Bess whispered to him as she tied the final, “but you’re all I got.”
When his wife removed the foamy spoon from his mouth, Ben looked at her, and asked a question in a trembling voice. “Bess, would you please forgive me if I let out a cuss?”
Touching his face, Bess said, “If this embroidery of mine doesn’t pardon swearing or whiskey, I don’t know whatever do. Cut it loose.”
With her red and shiny hands, Bess Tanner covered my ears instead of hers. That was when Ben fired off a masterpiece of low language for near to half a minute, without repeating a single sorry word. Nothing new or real fancy. Just a steady string of old favorites.
“Feel better?” she asked him.
Forcing a grin, Ben nodded. “It wouldn’t been so bad,” he said to his wife, “except that I always knew how you enjoy needlework.”
Bess faked a frown.
The next chore took a spell longer. With Bess under one arm, and me (shirtless) beneath the other, Ben Tanner stumbled upstairs to his bed. We pulled off his boots, stockings, and bloodstained trousers, and eased him careful, reeking of iodine, to a pile of pillows.
Bess paid me a dollar.
All this I told to Mama and Aunt Carrie. As they listened without a word, their faces turned serious and spoke how sorry they were that a bad thing had happened to such a sturdy neighbor.
When I come to the part about the stitches, Mama touched my arm, recalling, as did I, how Ben Tanner’s cow, Apron, tore me up about a year ago trying to drop her calf. Ben had found me and hauled me to home. Afterward, he give me a young pig, Pinky, for birthing a calf out of Apron.
“Will he be all right?” Mama asked.
I nodded. “Mr. Tanner’s harder than a rock maple. So I figure he’ll mend and be up and about. But until, best I help out some. A dollar a day is useful bank money. There’s work here to handle as well. Please … please don’t nag or fret me about school. That ol’ schoolhouse will be standing long after Ben Tanner’s put to prone.”
Mama said, “You can’t do it all, Rob.”
“No, s’pose not. But I’ll swallow a slab of it. We have to keep our farm. Compared to Mr. Tanner’s spread, ours isn’t so much to look after. All we have is five acres. Not quite that, according to what Papa told me. But it’s ours. And in four more years we’ll own it outright, if’n we keep up payments to the Learning Bank. So stuff that dollar in the teapot.”
“We’ll help,” Aunt Carrie said. “Your mother and I will do and do and do.” She turned to her younger sister. “Won’t we, Lucy?”
Mama nodded. “If we try our best, angels can do no better.”
I took their hands. They felt small yet strong as spruce. There was bark aplenty on my two little ladies.
“Say,” I said, “it’s time for a laugh. We agreed we’d have a good giggle every day. And believe me, I got one to share.”
Mama smiled. “I could use a chuckler.”
“It was something Ben Tanner said, just after Mr. Gamp left with his mare. Ben was lying there in the dirt. He got to his feet and helped me box General back in his stall. His face was twisted like taffy. So I asked him a dumb question about what it felt like to be bit so hard by a horse.”
“What did he say?” Mama asked. “That is,” she added with a wink, “if you can repeat it in front of Shaker ladies.”
“I’d asked … did it hurt? And all Ben said was … it gits your attention.”