Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 21

· 21 · THE WINTER that year was cold and snowy with a skim of ice on the river and frost on the window panes, a time of long gray twilights and slow dawns. Marsh was busy as always, cutting firewood, mending fence, getting out stone and building an enormous cellar for Delph, and tending his mules and hogs and cattle. Prices had continued low; it was cheaper to keep a hog and feed it corn than try to sell either the hog or the corn. When men asked him how he was making out, his answer was apt to be the same as that of other farmers about, "Well, I reckin I'm hangin' on." But there was no complaint in his answer, or fear, nor even the grimness that had colored his speech when during his first hard summer men asked him how he fared. Then, he had never known the taste of walking into his house, tired and cold from a good day's work in the winter air, have BurrHead , first crawling and then staggering tipsily toward him in short exciting sallies from chair to chair, have Delph come running up to him to kiss him on the chin or pull his nose or tweak an ear the way she always did-now. He always went first to the kitchen, but from there he would go into the living room, stand a moment with BurrHead in his arms and warm his back to the fire, maybe say nothing at all, for there seemed little need of saying anything. He would take the milk buckets then and go to do the barn work and the milking, maybe snatching up the half of a fried dried apple pie or a sliver of souse meat or ham on the way. Before meal time he was always hungry just as at night time he was always pleasantly sleepy. 292 293 It was good to finish the barn work and return to find the lamp lighted in the kitchen and the firelight in the next room flickering and flaming over the wall. Supper was always good, a bountiful meal like breakfast and dinner. He and Delph, since they could sell little, were sometimes hard put to take care of their food. Marsh complained at times that both he and Caesar were getting fat, Burr-Head was like a butter ball, and even Delph had curves to her elbows. That winter, partly because she must always have some plan or scheme or dream, to which to put her busy mind, Delph gave much time and thought to her cookery, and Marsh learned what it was to be well fed. The days when Lizzie Higginbottom or Dorie could sit and brag of well-fed families and low grocery bills were gone. Some said that Marsh and Delph either ordered their groceries from Sears Roebuck or else just didn't buy any, for all they ever seemed to buy at Lewis's store was a bit of salt and coffee with maybe a few pounds of sugar now and then'. Delph made her own soap, and they didn't even buy dried beans. Last summer Marsh had sowed cow peas in his corn. Delph had picked and hulled better than ten bushel, and Marsh had taken nine of them to a produce house in Hawthorne and swapped them for three bushels of good pinto beans. He never bought meal or even flour; he'd swapped some corn for wheat and had that ground in the Burdine mill as he had his corn ground. He had, after much urging from Delph, sold a good bit ofher timber , but every penny that came from it had gone as a payment on the land. It seemed unfair to use her money for food and clothes; the land and its mortgage were in her name as well as his; and if her money must be spent it should go only for that. Money the Elliots paid as rent had to buy fence-it seemed he could never be done buying fence-tools, a bit of mending here and there, a roof for this or that; and many times it hurt to see a thing going month after month in need of paint or roof he could not buy. He went for weeks that winter, and hardly knew the feel of a dollar in his pockets, and all of January was a scurry to meet the taxes. He would not touch...