The Moonflower Vine: A Novel

By Jetta Carleton and Jane Smiley

“Wit, emotion and undiminished boldness. . . . This is a book which celebrates life and warms the heart.” —Tulsa World

A timeless American classic, this beloved family saga of the heartland is “deeply felt . . . dramatic . . . constantly alive” (Harper’s Magazine)

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive—and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.

This moving novel brings to life the rhythms and the mood of Midwestern rural life through its endearing characters and their secrets, fears, heartache, and pleasures. Jetta Carleton’s only work of fiction remains an utterly compelling story told with perceptive humor and a deep compassion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 11, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061971181

Jetta Carleton

Jetta Carleton (1913-1999) moved from Holden, Missouri, to New York City to work as a television copywriter for national advertising agencies. Her widely beloved New York Times bestseller The Moonflower Vine was, until now, her only published novel.

Book preview

The Family

1

My father had a farm on the western side of Missouri, below the river, where the Ozark Plateau levels to join the plains. This is a region cut by creeks, where high pastures rise out of wooded valleys to catch the sunlight and fall away over limestone bluffs. It is a pretty country. It does not demand your admiration, as some regions do, but seems glad for it all the same. It repays you with serenity, corn and persimmons, blackberries, black walnuts, bluegrass and wild roses. A provident land, in its modest way. The farm lay in its heart, two hundred acres on a slow brown stream called Little Tebo.

The nineteenth century had not yet ended when my parents, Matthew and Callie Soames, first came to the farm. They arrived newlywedded, with a teakettle, a featherbed, and a span of mules. Later they went to live in a small town, where my father taught school. Sometimes they came back to the farm for the summer. After many years they came home to stay. They painted the house and propped up the old gray barn, bought a bull and a butane tank, and lived here the year around, as happy as if they were hale and twenty instead of a frail old pair who would not see seventy again.

My sisters and I used to visit them on the farm. We came each summer—Jessica from deep in the Ozarks, Leonie from a little town in Kansas, and I from New York, where I worked in television, then a new industry, very mysterious to my family. To me, and somewhat to my sisters, these visits were like income tax, an annual inconvenience. There were always so many other ways we could have spent the time. But, old as we were, our parents were still the government. They levied the tribute and we paid it.

Once we got there, we were happy enough. We lapsed easily into the old ways, cracked the old jokes, fished in the creek, ate country cream and grew fat and lazy. It was a time of placid unreality. The lives we lived outside were suspended, the affairs of the world forgotten and our common blood remembered. No matter that our values differed now, that we had gone our separate ways; when we met like this on familiar ground, we enjoyed one another.

I remember particularly a summer in the early fifties. Jessica’s husband and Leonie’s had stayed behind that year; one was a farmer, the other a mechanic, and neither could get away at the time. Only Leonie’s boy had come with her. Soames was a tall, beautiful, disconsolate child who had just turned eighteen. In a few weeks he was leaving to join the Air Force, and Leonie could hardly bear it. Once he was gone, there was so much he would have left undone, so much unsaid, that neither of them would ever again have a chance to do or say. It was a sad time for them. For the rest of us, too, especially as the war was still going on in Korea. The war itself troubled us deeply, and it gave his leaving a special gravity. We could not think of one without the other. And yet, here in deep country, remote from the outside world, it was possible, for the moment, to think of neither. There was no daily paper. Nobody bothered with the radio. The little news that came our way seemed unreal and no concern of ours. Only the planes roaring over each day from an airbase on the north reminded us of danger, and soon even they lost their menace. Their shadows slipped across the pasture and yard like the shadows of clouds, hardly more sinister. The farm was a little island in a sea of summer. And a faraway war where young men were dying troubled us less than the shooting of one old man.

This had happened close to home, a mile or two up the road. A recluse farmer named Corcoran had been shot by his only son, a poor creature recently discharged from the army. My parents found the old man the next morning, rolled under a bed like a rug in summer and left there to die. He was still, though barely, alive. They drove him twenty miles to a hospital, my mother sitting in the back seat with the old man’s head in her lap.

All this had taken place just before our arrival. On our last day but one, we were still talking about it.

Poor old thing, said my mother, be a blessing if he could die.

Yes, it would, said my father. Nobody to care for him at all.

He was a grouchy old thing, but he doesn’t deserve to suffer.

How old is he? I said.

He must be seventy, at least, said my mother. The way she talked, he could have been her grandfather.

Have they caught the boy? said Soames.

Not yet.

Wonder how come him to do that.

I don’t know, said my father. Some say the old man was pretty hard on him.

There were all kinds of tales! my mother said. About his daddy chainin’ him in the smokehouse and all that. I never believed ’em.

Idle gossip, said Dad. The old man had a way of antagonizing people and they had to get back at him. He was rough and crude in his ways, but he wasn’t mean.

No, he wasn’t. The boy was just odd, that’s all. He wasn’t quite right. I don’t know how he got into the army.

It figures. Soames grinned and got up.

Oh, you’re a sight! Mama said, patting him on the seat of his jeans. My goodness, we forgot to heat dishwater.

So ended the symposium on neighborhood violence. We pulled ourselves up from the table, all of us stupefied with food. We had dined on roast tenderloin, peas in pure cream, sliced green tomatoes browned in butter, and burnt-sugar cake for dessert. My mother set a country table, and dinner was at noon.

That sure tasted good, said Jessica. I wish I had three stomachs, like a cow.

Me, too, Leonie said. She ate the last fried tomato off the platter.

On top of cake? I said.

I always have to finish off on something salty.

You’ll get as fat as pig, said my father, patting her shoulder.

Where are you going now? said Mama.

Just out on the porch, said Dad.

Well, don’t forget, you have to go in town this afternoon to get ice—you or Soames one.

I’ll go, Grandma! Soames never missed a chance to drive my little car.

Why, honey, said Leonie, you don’t want to go running off to town, do you? Why don’t you stay home like a good boy and work on the barn roof? Mother would be so proud if you’d just finish your job.

I’ll finish it.

Well, never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. You know tomorrow we’re going to cut the bee tree.

I know it.

And there’s a whole bundle of shingles you haven’t touched yet.

I know that, too, Mother. I’ll get around to them.

Not if you go running off to town.

Aw, let him go, said my father. It gets hot up there on that roof, doesn’t it, boy? We’ll both drive in after a while.

Don’t wait too late, Mama said. We want to get our cream made before the moonflowers bloom.

We’ll be back in plenty of time.

Well, be sure. She turned back to us. We ought to have two dozen blooms tonight! I counted the pods this morning. I never see so many! Well now, girls, what are we going to take on our picnic tomorrow? Let’s decide.

We discussed it as we washed dishes. Down in the woods my father had found a hollow tree where the bees had hived. Tomorrow we were going to smoke them out, chop the tree, and take the wild honey. In the course of it, we would also fish and swim and cook our dinner by the shady creek. Our father and mother planned it as an all-day excursion, a jolly windup of our two weeks at home. As we debated the respective merits of French fries and potato salad, the telephone on the dining-room wall rang two shorts and a long.

That’s our ring, said Mama.

I’ll get it, Dad called. A minute later he came to the kitchen door. Mama, it’s Jake Latham. He and Fanny and the Barrows and some of them are going over to Corcoran’s place tomorrow. Jake says his timothy is dead ripe and ought to be shocked. He thinks the peaches need picking, too.

Oh, he does, does he? Mama’s smile was mildly ironic. It’s about time they did a little something for him. This’ll be the first time.

"Well, better late than never. Absit invidia."

I reckon they wanted us to come and help.

That’s what they want.

I guess you told ’em we couldn’t.

I said I’d see.

Mama looked at him as if he’d gone soft in the head. But we’re going to cut the bee tree tomorrow!

I know, but—

Didn’t you tell him that?

No—

Why not?

Well, Dad said, squirming, I don’t know that Jake would think a bee tree much of an excuse.

Oh foot, who cares what Jake thinks!

We don’t want to appear uncooperative, Dad said primly.

Appears to me it’s them that’s uncooperative. They never done anything for him before. Well, anyway, it’s nice they’re doin’ it now. I wouldn’t mind helpin’, but can’t they wait till Monday?

"I asked Jake. He said that didn’t suit him."

"Well, tomorrow doesn’t suit us. We’ve got our plans all made."

I know, Dad said, looking worried. I hate to go tomorrow, but I don’t see how I can refuse. You folks go ahead with your picnic, and I’ll go on over to Corcoran’s and help.

That wouldn’t be fair, said Jessica. Why don’t we just all go. Your big girls can help.

No sir! said Mama. Ain’t any of us goin’. Ain’t any use in lettin’ them spoil our day. There’s plenty of them to do the work, without us, and for once they can just do it.

They’ll think we’re mighty selfish, Dad warned.

Then they’ll just have to think it. That’s the price we’ll have to pay.

All right. If that’s how you feel, I’ll say no more. Dad put on his hat and went out with an air of noble resignation. He was vastly relieved.

We finished the dishes, and Mama went upstairs for a nap. Soames had gone back to work. Leonie went out to tell him what a good boy he was.

Poor ol’ Leonie, said Jessica, "looks like she’s going to force him to finish that roof."

Not if she encourages him to death, I said. If she doesn’t shut up, he’ll get mad and quit, like he always does.

Yes, said Jessica, and then he’ll feel guilty, poor young’un.

And have to be mad at her.

And she’ll think he doesn’t love her or he’d have done what she wanted him to. Oh dear.

Just like the voice lessons, I said. Leonie had pleaded, nagged, encouraged and commanded, tried every stratagem known to mothers to turn Soames into a singer. She was right, of course, for Soames had a fine voice. He might have been really good if he’d worked. But he wasn’t interested in singing or in anything much, except flying.

Poor kids, said Jessica. I feel so sorry for both of them I can’t hardly stand it.

Well, let’s get her back in the house if we can and make her leave him alone. I’ll play the piano. That ought to do it.

We went into the front room to the old battered piano and dug out some very back issues of Étude Magazine. I attempted a composition called Cupid’s Appeal, a great favorite of mine in my youth. It took me a while to arrange my fingers, and the melody tended to get lost between chords.

Leonie came in with her hands over her ears. Ow-wow! she said, like Amos and Andy. Move over!

She polished off Cupid’s Appeal in a competent manner and played some other pieces in the back, including the songs—all of them full of Hark! and Ah! and sorrow at eventide—which Jessica and I rendered in appropriate mood. We thought we were pretty funny. In the midst of it, a stray beagle who had hung around the yard all week began to howl.

I went out to comfort him. Poor thing, I wish you knew where you lived.

He’s a sad crittur, said Jessica.

He’s a nice little dog. I like him.

He’s got fleas.

He can’t help it.

Whatever happened to the one with the beard? said Jessica.

A dog with a beard?

Well, he was kind of a dog. I mean that funny-lookin’ boy you brought here last summer.

Oh, him! I didn’t bring him—he just came. He was on a walking tour.

Talking tour, I’d call it.

I remember him, Leonie chimed in. He wore tennis shoes.

And no socks, Jessica added.

And he smelled funny.

One of those dirties she takes up with!

They beamed at me in devilish glee, off on a tear again about the company I kept. They never could understand the wild-haired anarchic types that seemed to gravitate to me, and I didn’t always appreciate them myself.

Remember him and the sorghum? Jessica said. He kept spilling it in his beard.

And getting his beard in his plate!

There was always a swarm of flies after him.

Now stop it! I yelled. He was very intellectual.

Intellectual! Leonie reared back indignantly. "He sneered at Shakespeare!"

Sh! You’ll wake Mama! Everybody broke out giggling again for no special reason.

I’m so hot, said Jessica, I’m foamin’ between the legs. Let’s go down to the bathtub.

The only bathtub on the farm was a wide place in the branch. Taking some towels and a cake of Ivory, we strolled down through the east pasture to where the little stream nibbled its way through a deep ravine. At one spot, my father had hollowed a spring out of the bank and kept a cup hanging on a birch limb. He believed in the therapeutic value of spring water, wild honey, and sunshine. We slid down and squatted on our heels in the sand. It was cool and sweet-smelling down there.

Have some branch water, said Jessica, handing me a cupful. Good for the kidneys.

She and I had a contest to see who could hold the most. Neither of us had ever heard of internal drowning. Leonie finally made us stop. You’ll be peeing in the bathtub, she said. We waded on down to where the stream widened into a pool. The water was deeper here, so clear you could see leaf shadows on the smooth sandstone bottom. We hung our clothes on the buckbrush, and Jessica waded in, screeching as the icy water came up around her middle. Leonie stepped in delicately, splashing water on her wrists and the backs of her knees. My foot slipped and I fell in. After a bit we got used to the cold. We soaped and dunked and splashed, cavorting like three little boys instead of grown-up women. Jessica was almost fifty and Leonie not far behind. I was close to thirty. But none of us acted our age or felt it. We mostly behaved like retarded children, because our parents liked us that way.

Our bodies glowed with the sting of the water. Aren’t we pretty? I said.

We stopped splashing and looked at each other. Why, yes we are, said Jessica. We’re real nice.

Though she was overweight and I was skinny, all three of us were smooth and unblemished and the skin fit snug on our bones. Out here in the open, lacy with sunlight, we were beautiful, and it seemed the natural thing to say so. We climbed out and sat on a flat rock, rubbing ourselves warm with the big towels.

I wish Mama and Dad would put in some plumbing, said Leonie. Wouldn’t you think they’d want it?

Well, I don’t know, said Jessica. They’ve been without it for seventy years, I guess they don’t miss it.

They could get used to it.

Why, what’s the matter with this? said Jessica, imitating my father’s tone. Why, this is good enough for anybody!

We laughed, and I thought of the town where I grew up, where only the banker and the grocer could afford a septic tank and the constant repairs of a pump in the basement. The rest of us got along the best way we could. I remember the kitchen on a winter morning—coal buckets underfoot, the bucket for slops near the door, water boiling on the big black range, my father shaving at the kitchen table, and I in my petticoat, washing myself in the gray enamel pan (my neck and under my arms), while my mother fried the bacon and grease burned on the stovelids. The kitchen was not a gracious room. It was bathroom, dining room, laundry and dairy, each in turn or all at once. Not that you thought very much about it. Not, that is, till you visited in the city. After each exposure to other folkways, it was harder to sit in the outhouse at ten below or tolerate that functional urn in the bedroom.

This was in winter. In summer, life expanded with the sunshine. You could bathe upstairs, do the laundry outside in the shade of the peach tree. You could iron in the breeze on the back porch. The house grew taller, wider, prettier. Heating stoves went out to the smokehouse and flowers came in to the tables. There were still the water buckets to fill and the slops to empty. But no coal to carry in, no ashes to carry out. And there was no need for the chamber pot; one went out to the toilet before going to bed—a pleasant excursion on a summer night.

Well, anyway, Leonie was saying, I wish they’d modernize the place a little, if they’re going to stay here.

They can’t stay here much longer, said Jessica.

They think they can.

I know, but they just can’t. Bless their hearts, they’re too old. Anyway, plumbing wouldn’t be half as much fun as this.

The sun trickled down through the oak leaves. Away off in the woods a cardinal told us what a handsome bird he was. Pretty-bird, pretty-bird! he said over and over. Jessica sat on a blue towel, hugging her knees. Her skin was still rosy from the water and her round cleft rump like a great peach. She looked like Boucher’s Diana or a bather by Renoir. But she would have laughed if I’d told her, and said Boo-shay didn’t know boo-cat, or something to that effect. Jessica was not about to pretend that she was anything but what showed up in clothes—a plain, middle-aged woman, rather dowdy and in need of a girdle.

I looked at my other sister, sitting in the sunlight, brown and glossy as a warm brown egg. She was the one with enviable pigment, a dark-skinned blonde whom sunlight loved. As her skin tanned, her hair turned paler and paler. It streamed over her shoulders now, fine and silvery as young corn silks. No woman who looked like that, I thought, deserved the nature of Carry Nation. But Leonie’s was something like that. More than the rest of us, Leonie bore the vestigial burning passed down from our forebears, a hellfire breed who preached a trail through Indiana and Kentucky, hacking the wilderness with the Word of God. If in their zeal the apple sapling fell with the poison oak, that was right, for it was the Word of God that felled it. The Holy Book was the law and the light and the way, and it was not love. And nothing could sway those ember-eyed fanatics, chopping their way toward Missouri and the twentieth century—just as nothing swayed Leonie. She had this burning, this ax of God. But hers was a hard way, like theirs, and defeats were many. When the blight of doubt fell on her, it was pitiful to see. Two weeks ago when she came to the farm, her face sagged with worry and her eyes were hollow. But the gentle days and the cream and laughter had rounded and smoothed her and made her beautiful again. Sitting naked on the rock, combing her long blond hair, she looked like a Lorelei, and I told her so. She took the compliment with a shy smile, not believing but pleased that I gave it.

I expect Mama’s awake by this time, she said. We ought to get back.

I suppose we should.

But nobody stirred. We watched a leaf tilt down slowly and land on the water. Another followed. A locust ripped a little hole in the silence with his serrated cry.

Autumn… said Jessica. We let it drift away on the warm air.

After a while we dressed and took the long way home. Climbing a slope, we came out on the high meadow we called the Old Chimney Place. A few soft bleached bricks marked the spot where a house had burned, years before our time. Jessica and Leonie could remember when the chimney stood tall, visible from the road.

Remember, said Jessica, how we used to mark off rooms inside the old foundation?

With clover chains, said Leonie.

And decorate them with daisies?

Yes, and Queen Anne’s lace and chigger weed.

And how the chiggers decorated us! They laughed. There was a plum thicket here—we used to eat them before they got quite ripe, remember?

We got so sick and Mama got so mad! It was nice here then.

That was a long time ago.

Yes…

Mathy had a playhouse here, said Jessica. Remember the times we found her here when she didn’t come home after dark?

I remember!

They smiled at each other and moved on ahead of me, lost in times that I had little part in. I had not shared their childhood. They had another little sister, long before me. This was Mathy, the third daughter, whom I remembered only dimly. She went away when I was three. But Mathy had a child, a boy named Peter, born when I was five. Through him I knew something of her nature. Peter was very like her, so they told me—fine-boned and dark, with bright dark eyes; quick and antic and imperturbable, and, like his mother, fascinated by the world. Peter loved trees and stones and dug-up bones and most especially the intricate mechanism of anything that crept or flew—bugs, beetles, butterflies. He had made them his work. He was studying in Europe now on a fellowship, at the University of Leyden. We were all terribly proud of Peter.

Jessica and Leonie came back around the old foundation, still talking of Mathy. It must have been a hard life, Leonie said. I wouldn’t have liked it.

Neither would I. But I think she was happy.

I hope so. I really do hope so! Leonie looked up earnestly, as if Jessica might doubt her.

I wish Peter were here, I said, watching a ladybug climb up a stem.

I wish I were there! said Leonie. I’d give anything to see Europe.

I’ll take you some day—if it doesn’t blow up first. Wouldn’t it be fun to be there with Peter?

Oh, wouldn’t it! she said. Did he write you about his vacation, that trip he took? He writes the most marvelous letters.

And lots of them.

I hope Soames will do half as well. Last summer when he was away, I got one little postcard. Her face clouded briefly and brightened again. Peter sent us cards from everywhere. London, Venice, Denmark. Just think, he’s seen Elsinore!

Yes, he wrote me.

Elsinore! All those places you read about in literature! And Peter appreciates it so.

Yes, he does.

I wish Soames were like that. Again that look of hurt perplexity came into her face. "Oh, when I think! If only he’d kept on with his vocal lessons—he could have studied in Europe, too. Italy—Paris—! If only I could have found some way—if his father had been any help—" She turned away, her pretty face clenched in frustration.

A faint Hoo-hoo? came drifting through the woods from the direction of the house. There’s Mama, I said. We’d better get on back before she comes looking for us.

We set off down the slope, passed through a strip of woods, and came up through the orchard among the silvery arthritic trees, their joints swollen and calcified with time. Here and there my father had set new trees, replenishing his grove. Nothing was allowed to die.

There goes the mail carrier! Jessica said, as a car drove up the road. He’s late today.

Maybe we’ll hear from Peter, said Leonie. She hurried to the mailbox, where Mama stood with a letter in her hand. Is it from Peter?

I think it’s from Ophelia, said Mama.

Oh, shoot.

Ophelia was a second cousin of ours. She and her family lived south of the farm, some forty miles away. Mama opened the letter and handed it to me. Read it, Mary Jo. I never can make out her writin’.

I peered at the letter and held it out at a distance. Ophelia’s script was like an abstract painting; you had to back off and squint to make something of it.

‘Dear Cousins,’ I read, ‘haven’t heard from you folks in a while. Wonder if you are still alive and kicking, ha! Well, Ralph and me are about as well as common. With the help of Jesus. Ma complains some. She is poorly this summer. I don’t know how much longer we will have her with us.’

Poor old Aunt Cass, Mama said, referring to Ophelia’s mother. Her mind wanders. But my land, for one her age, she’s stronger than I am.

She smells it, too, I said. She was pretty ripe when we were down there last summer.

Why, Mary Jo!

Well, she was—all of ’em were. Ophelia and Ralph holler and carry on at those holiness meetings and work up a good sweat and never take a bath.

They’re washed in the blood of the Lamb, said Jessica.

It’s no substitute for Lifebuoy.

Hush that, both of you, said Mama. You ought to be ashamed. What else does she say?

I squinted again. ‘If the Lord wills, Ma will be ninety-six her birthday. We are looking for you folks down that day. You promised you would come and bring the girls.’

I could kick myself, said Mama. I did promise, when we’s down there Decoration Day. I’d forgot all about it. Why couldn’t she!

Because she’s got a memory like an elephant, I said.

And that ain’t all, said Jessica. Ophelia was rather large. When is Aunt Cass’s birthday, Mama?

Tomorrow!

Oh no!

Ain’t that just the way of it!

We don’t have to go, do we?

We’d ought to.

We can’t—we’re going to cut the bee tree.

But I promised! Mama wailed, looking at us in despair.

Well, said Jessica, you can break that kind of a promise. God won’t hold it against you.

Yes, but Ophelia will. She’ll be plumb mad. And Aunt Cass is so old—this may be her last birthday.

Mama, do you realize we’ve been going to Aunt Cass’s farewell parties for the last nine years?

Well, I know, but—

And we may be going another nine, if these all-day powwows don’t get her down before then. All that cryin’ and kissin’—

Cousin Ralph and his wet mustache! I said.

—and shoutin’ and singin’ hymns! Jessica went on. "If Ophelia’s so worried about her ma, she better cut out the celebrations. She just has ’em because she likes ’em."

I guess that’s true, Mama said. But you can’t hardly blame her. It gets awful lonesome down there.

Jessica snorted. Why, Mama, they don’t get lonesome! They go to those tent meetings and drive into town and Ralphie and the grandchildren are always coming to see them—they have a dandy time.

"Ophelia says they’re lonesome."

She’s just playing on your sympathies. She knows she can do it. She has you and Dad running down there all the time. And the trip’s hard on you, you know it is.

Well, yes, Mama conceded. But next time I see her, she’s going to want to know why I broke my promise. What excuse will I give her?

Tell her we were going to cut a bee tree—just tell her the truth.

The truth’s hard for some folks to understand.

Then make it easy on Ophelia. Lie!

Mama looked at us thoughtfully. I reckon I just will.

We laughed and I kissed her on the cheek. It had the soft worn feel of old linen. (I never could get used to mothers who were young. Mine was middle-aged when I was born, and crisp young mothers never seemed authentic.)

Besides, said Mama, if we’s to go away off down there, we wouldn’t get back in time for the moonflowers.

That crisis passed, we settled down to peel peaches in the parlor. It was cooler in there. Mama wanted to make preserves before supper. We didn’t need more preserves, but she enjoyed the work. Every morning of our vacation she greeted us with shining face. Now today we’re not going to work—we’re going to do just what we want to do! And every day it turned out that we just wanted to wash all the quilts, or scrub woodwork, or make another batch of preserves. It had been like that all our lives. Our mother ruled us with a practical hand, the broom and fruit jar her badge of office, the washboard her shield and buckler. We were allowed to study, as our father was a schoolteacher, but we were rarely allowed to read. Shouldn’t we instead be doing something? And wouldn’t we rather? Mama needs you—let’s clean the smokehouse—hurray! My mother loved her work, and never so well as when she had us to help her.

Age had done nothing to diminish her passion. Here she was at seventy, keeping house as assiduously as ever. She had none of the conveniences at the farm. But bless her, she had someone to help!

She had a friend whose name was Hagar, a leathery little old maiden lady who lived on the next hill. Miss Hagar had moved there some years ago with an aging father. When the old man died, Miss Hagar stayed on on her rundown farm, as lonely as her namesake. Oftentimes we beheld her single in the field, a solitary reaper in sunbonnet, faded gingham, and a man’s old shoes. A rough, shy, stolid little creature who fended for herself and asked no favors. She did a man’s work more easily than woman’s. She smoked a pipe. Aside from a certain female relish of natural sorrow, loss, or pain, there was hardly a feminine trait about her. But she was devoted to my mother. Several times a week she came to visit, and the two of them gathered and canned and cleaned and talked, cozy as cats in a warm barn.

She was an odd companion for my mother, who smelled of sachet and wore ribbons in her petticoats. My mother put ruffles at her windows and doilies on her tables; she longed for the Victorian elegance of plush, cut glass, long velvet portieres, and a fine white house in town. A big house on the corner, with a porch all around, a great green lawn, and a boy to come Saturdays and trim the hedge. She would have been quite at home with servants.

Yet on the other hand, my mother had plowed a field in her day and was not ashamed. She had country values. She liked crops and fat cattle, jars glimmering red and gold and green in the cool earth-smelling dark of dirt cellars. She liked the kitchen filled on Sunday with relatives and old friends. And she liked a good visit, a conversation heavy and rich with death and loss and pity.

Miss Hagar was her woman, far more than ladies she had lived among in town. Those ladies, most of them, played bridge and gave luncheons. They called things by fancy names and bought gadgets and listened to serials on the radio. My mother scorned such women, yet they made her ill at ease. Because her grammar was faulty and her values were not, she was made to feel out of place.

Lonely for her own kind, she kept a good deal to herself. She tended her house, raised her children, and for forty years waited for her husband. Morning after morning she rose and cooked his breakfast and saw him off to school. Evening after evening she sat beside him, watching him as he worked. The wind mourned in the chimney, the kettle sighed, the rocker creaked, and he said never a word. He had work to do; he must not be interrupted. She sat motionless to still the rocker. The clock ticked, the kettle sighed. And she slipped off to bed. She was lonely for forty years. But she loved him and she waited.

Her children grew up with flawless grammar and strange rebellions. But she loved them and was patient. All of them went away, one of them died. But at last, incomplete as all things are, but recognizable withal, the joy she waited for came about. She could come back to the good creek farm. Her husband was all hers at last. Her children came home to her in summer. And she had a friend, devoted as a good servant, who loved to talk of death and disaster and could not read a word.

Miss Hagar went to town this afternoon, Mama said, glancing up from her peaches. I don’t know what for. It must have been important—she hasn’t been to town more than three times all summer.

Too bad she didn’t know Dad was going, said Jessica. She could have gone with him.

She wouldn’t have, anyway. We’re always askin’ her to go in with us, but she’s afraid she’ll be some bother to somebody. Won’t hardly let you do a thing for her. And land-a-livin’, as much as she does for us!

She sure is a help.

And won’t take nothin’ for it. We try and try to pay her a little something, but she won’t have it. Papa takes her up a box of groceries once in a while, or a sack of feed. Mama glanced up again. "Where is Papa? I wish he’d go on in and get that ice."

He’s already gone, I said.

Are you sure? said Leonie. I thought Soames was still here.

I guess Dad went without him.

Really? Leonie went to the back door and looked out. I can hardly believe it, she said, coming back. Somebody went to town and Soames is still here working!

He sure is doing a good job on that roof, said Mama. Listen—don’t that sound pretty? Soames had begun to sing.

Oh yes, he’ll sing now—when he thinks nobody’s listening. Leonie’s face was wistful as the clear sweet baritone soared from the barn roof, dreaming of Jeanie with the light-brown hair. She had such hopes for that voice.

Mama sighed contentedly. "Such a sad song. Makes