Part 3

Not for myself was I so much concerned. Oh no!--although, of course, I could have found A better way to pass the afternoon Than grinding discord out of a grindstone, And beating insects at their gritty tune. Nor was I for the man so much concerned. Once when the grindstone almost jumped its bearing It looked as if he might be badly thrown And wounded on his blade. So far from caring, I laughed inside, and only cranked the faster, (It ran as if it wasn't greased but glued); I'd welcome any moderate disaster That might be calculated to postpone What evidently nothing could conclude. The thing that made me more and more afraid Was that we'd ground it sharp and hadn't known, And now were only wasting precious blade. And when he raised it dripping once and tried The creepy edge of it with wary touch, And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed, Only disinterestedly to decide It needed a turn more, I could have cried Wasn't there danger of a turn too much? Mightn't we make it worse instead of better? I was for leaving something to the whetter. What if it wasn't all it should be? I'd Be satisfied if he'd be satisfied.

PAUL'S WIFE

To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, "How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear. Some said it was because he had no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject. Others because he'd come within a day Or so of having one, and then been jilted. Others because he'd had one once, a good one, Who'd run away with some one else and left him. And others still because he had one now He only had to be reminded of,-- He was all duty to her in a minute: He had to run right off to look her up, As if to say, "That's so, how is my wife? I hope she isn't getting into mischief." No one was anxious to get rid of Paul. He'd been the hero of the mountain camps Ever since, just to show them, he had slipped The bark of a whole tamarack off whole, As clean as boys do off a willow twig To make a willow whistle on a Sunday In April by subsiding meadow brooks. They seemed to ask him just to see him go, "How is the wife, Paul?" and he always went. He never stopped to murder anyone Who asked the question. He just disappeared-- Nobody knew in what direction, Although it wasn't usually long Before they heard of him in some new camp, The same Paul at the same old feats of logging. The question everywhere was why should Paul Object to being asked a civil question-- A man you could say almost anything to Short of a fighting word. You have the answers. And there was one more not so fair to Paul: That Paul had married a wife not his equal. Paul was ashamed of her. To match a hero, She would have had to be a heroine; Instead of which she was some half-breed squaw. But if the story Murphy told was true, She wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

You know Paul could do wonders. Everyone's Heard how he thrashed the horses on a load That wouldn't budge until they simply stretched Their rawhide harness from the load to camp. Paul told the boss the load would be all right, "The sun will bring your load in"--and it did-- By shrinking the rawhide to natural length. That's what is called a stretcher. But I guess The one about his jumping so's to land With both his feet at once against the ceiling, And then land safely right side up again, Back on the floor, is fact or pretty near fact. Well this is such a yarn. Paul sawed his wife Out of a white-pine log. Murphy was there, And, as you might say, saw the lady born. Paul worked at anything in lumbering. He'd been hard at it taking boards away For--I forget--the last ambitious sawyer To want to find out if he couldn't pile The lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy. They'd sliced the first slab off a big butt log, And the sawyer had slammed the carriage back To slam end on again against the saw teeth. To judge them by the way they caught themselves When they saw what had happened to the log, They must have had a guilty expectation Something was going to go with their slambanging. Something had left a broad black streak of grease On the new wood the whole length of the log Except, perhaps, a foot at either end. But when Paul put his finger in the grease, It wasn't grease at all, but a long slot. The log was hollow. They were sawing pine. "First time I ever saw a hollow pine. That comes of having Paul around the place. Take it to hell for me," the sawyer said. Everyone had to have a look at it, And tell Paul what he ought to do about it. (They treated it as his.) "You take a jack-knife, And spread the opening, and you've got a dug-out All dug to go a-fishing in." To Paul The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees. There was no entrance for them to get in by. It looked to him like some new kind of hollow He thought he'd _better_ take his jack-knife to. So after work that evening he came back And let enough light into it by cutting To see if it was empty. He made out in there A slender length of pith, or was it pith? It might have been the skin a snake had cast And left stood up on end inside the tree The hundred years the tree must have been growing. More cutting and he had this in both hands, And, looking from it to the pond near by, Paul wondered how it would respond to water. Not a breeze stirred, but just the breath of air He made in walking slowly to the beach Blew it once off his hands and almost broke it. He laid it at the edge where it could drink. At the first drink it rustled and grew limp. At the next drink it grew invisible. Paul dragged the shallows for it with his fingers, And thought it must have melted. It was gone. And then beyond the open water, dim with midges, Where the log drive lay pressed against the boom, It slowly rose a person, rose a girl, Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet, Who, leaning on a log looked back at Paul. And that made Paul in turn look back To see if it was anyone behind him That she was looking at instead of him. Murphy had been there watching all the time, But from a shed where neither of them could see him. There was a moment of suspense in birth When the girl seemed too water-logged to live, Before she caught her first breath with a gasp And laughed. Then she climbed slowly to her feet, And walked off talking to herself or Paul Across the logs like backs of alligators, Paul taking after her around the pond.

Next evening Murphy and some other fellows Got drunk, and tracked the pair up Catamount, From the bare top of which there is a view To other hills across a kettle valley. And there, well after dark, let Murphy tell it, They saw Paul and his creature keeping house. It was the only glimpse that anyone Has had of Paul and her since Murphy saw them Falling in love across the twilight mill-pond. More than a mile across the wilderness They sat together half-way up a cliff In a small niche let into it, the girl Brightly, as if a star played on the place, Paul darkly, like her shadow. All the light Was from the girl herself, though, not from a star, As was apparent from what happened next. All those great ruffians put their throats together, And let out a loud yell, and threw a bottle, As a brute tribute of respect to beauty. Of course the bottle fell short by a mile, But the shout reached the girl and put her light out. She went out like a firefly, and that was all.

So there were witnesses that Paul was married, And not to anyone to be ashamed of. Everyone had been wrong in judging Paul. Murphy told me Paul put on all those airs About his wife to keep her to himself. Paul was what's called a terrible possessor. Owning a wife with him meant owning her. She wasn't anybody else's business, Either to praise her, or so much as name her, And he'd thank people not to think of her. Murphy's idea was that a man like Paul Wouldn't be spoken to about a wife In any way the world knew how to speak.

WILD GRAPES

What tree may not the fig be gathered from? The grape may not be gathered from the birch? It's all you know the grape, or know the birch. As a girl gathered from the birch myself Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn, I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of. I was born, I suppose, like anyone, And grew to be a little boyish girl My brother could not always leave at home. But that beginning was wiped out in fear The day I swung suspended with the grapes, And was come after like Eurydice And brought down safely from the upper regions; And the life I live now's an extra life I can waste as I please on whom I please. So if you see me celebrate two birthdays, And give myself out as two different ages, One of them five years younger than I look--

One day my brother led me to a glade Where a white birch he knew of stood alone, Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves, And heavy on her heavy hair behind, Against her neck, an ornament of grapes. Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year. One bunch of them, and there began to be Bunches all round me growing in white birches, The way they grew round Lief the Lucky's German; Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though, As the moon used to seem when I was younger, And only freely to be had for climbing. My brother did the climbing; and at first Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack; Which gave him some time to himself to eat, But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed. So then, to make me wholly self-supporting, He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth, And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes. "Here, take a tree-top, I'll get down another. Hold on with all your might when I let go." I said I had the tree. It wasn't true. The opposite was true. The tree had me. The minute it was left with me alone It caught me up as if I were the fish And it the fishpole. So I was translated To loud cries from my brother of "Let go! Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!" But I, with something of the baby grip Acquired ancestrally in just such trees When wilder mothers than our wildest now Hung babies out on branches by the hands To dry or wash or tan, I don't know which (You'll have to ask an evolutionist)-- I held on uncomplainingly for life. My brother tried to make me laugh to help me. "What are you doing up there in those grapes? Don't be afraid. A few of them won't hurt you. I mean, they won't pick you if you don't them." Much danger of my picking anything!

By that time I was pretty well reduced To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang. "Now you know how it feels," my brother said, "To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them, That when it thinks it has escaped the fox By growing where it shouldn't--on a birch, Where a fox wouldn't think to look for it-- And if he looked and found it, couldn't reach it-- Just then come you and I to gather it. Only you have the advantage of the grapes In one way: you have one more stem to cling by, And promise more resistance to the picker."

One by one I lost off my hat and shoes, And still I clung. I let my head fall back, And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears Against my brother's nonsense; "Drop," he said, "I'll catch you in my arms. It isn't far." (Stated in lengths of him it might not be.) "Drop or I'll shake the tree and shake you down." Grim silence on my part as I sank lower, My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings. "Why, if she isn't serious about it! Hold tight awhile till I think what to do. I'll bend the tree down and let you down by it." I don't know much about the letting down; But once I felt ground with my stocking feet And the world came revolving back to me, I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers, Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off. My brother said: "Don't you weigh anything? Try to weigh something next time, so you won't Be run off with by birch trees into space."

It wasn't my not weighing anything So much as my not knowing anything-- My brother had been nearer right before. I had not taken the first step in knowledge; I had not learned to let go with the hands, As still I have not learned to with the heart, And have no wish to with the heart--nor need, That I can see. The mind--is not the heart. I may yet live, as I know others live, To wish in vain to let go with the mind-- Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me That I need learn to let go with the heart.

PLACE FOR A THIRD

Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three. But come to die she found she cared so much: She thought of children in a burial row; Three children in a burial row were sad. One man's three women in a burial row Somehow made her impatient with the man. And so she said to Laban, "You have done A good deal right; don't do the last thing wrong. Don't make me lie with those two other women."

Laban said, No, he would not make her lie With anyone but that she had a mind to, If that was how she felt, of course, he said. She went her way. But Laban having caught This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza, And anxious to make all he could of it With something he remembered in himself, Tried to think how he could exceed his promise, And give good measure to the dead, though thankless. If that was how she felt, he kept repeating. His first thought under pressure was a grave In a new boughten grave plot by herself, Under he didn't care how great a stone: He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it. And weren't there special cemetery flowers, That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest: The flowers will go on with grief awhile, And no one seem neglecting or neglected? A prudent grief will not despise such aids. He thought of evergreen and everlasting. And then he had a thought worth many of these. Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy Who married her for playmate more than helpmate, And sometimes laughed at what it was between them. How would she like to sleep her last with him? Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name?

He found the grave a town or two away, The headstone cut with _John, Beloved Husband_, Beside it room reserved, the say a sister's, A never-married sister's of that husband, Whether Eliza would be welcome there. The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister. So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing Of where Eliza wanted _not_ to lie, And who had thought to lay her with her first love, Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility. She wanted to do right. She'd have to think. Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care; And she was old and poor--but she cared, too. They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him, Then turned him out to go on other errands She said he might attend to in the village, While she made up her mind how much she cared-- And how much Laban cared--and why he cared, (She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.) She'd looked Eliza up her second time, A widow at her second husband's grave, And offered her a home to rest awhile Before she went the poor man's widow's way, Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock. She and Eliza had been friends through all. Who was she to judge marriage in a world Whose Bible's so confused in marriage counsel? The sister had not come across this Laban; A decent product of life's ironing-out; She must not keep him waiting. Time would press Between the death day and the funeral day. So when she saw him coming in the street She hurried her decision to be ready To meet him with his answer at the door. Laban had known about what it would be From the way she had set her poor old mouth, To do, as she had put it, what was right.

She gave it through the screen door closed between them: "No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense. Eliza's had too many other men."

Laban was forced to fall back on his plan To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: Which gives him for himself a choice of lots When his time comes to die and settle down.

TWO WITCHES

I. THE WITCH OF COÖS _Circa_ 1922

I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountain, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

_Mother._ Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won't, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button, Who's got the button," I would have them know.

_Son._ Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like an army mule.

_Mother._ And when I've done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How could that be--I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious That there's something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.

_Son._ You wouldn't want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother?

_Mother._ Bones--a skeleton.

_Son._ But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed Against the attic door: the door is nailed. It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from.

_Mother._ We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never!

_Son._ It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs. I was a baby: I don't know where I was.

_Mother._ The only fault my husband found with me-- I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow. The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or a little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile: It wasn't anyone who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow. The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow. It was the bones. I knew them--and good reason. My first impulse was to get to the knob And hold the door. But the bones didn't try The door; they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in their favor. The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn't been too strong in me To see how they were mounted for this walk. I had a vision of them put together Not like a man, but like a chandelier. So suddenly I flung the door wide on him. A moment he stood balancing with emotion, And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself. The finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box--it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile, It's coming up to you." It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!" "Company," he said, "Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed." So lying forward weakly on the handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it. It's with us in the room though. It's the bones." "What bones?" "The cellar bones--out of the grave." That made him throw his bare legs out of bed And sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put out the light and see If I could see it, or else mow the room, With our arms at the level of our knees, And bring the chalk-pile down. "I'll tell you what-- It's looking for another door to try. The uncommonly deep snow has made him think Of his old song, _The Wild Colonial Boy_, He always used to sing along the tote-road. He's after an open door to get out-doors. Let's trap him with an open door up attic." Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, Almost the moment he was given an opening, The steps began to climb the attic stairs. I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them. "Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob. "Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door shut, And push the headboard of the bed against it. Then we asked was there anything Up attic that we'd ever want again. The attic was less to us than the cellar. If the bones liked the attic, let them have it, Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed Behind the door and headboard of the bed, Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers, With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, That's what I sit up in the dark to say-- To no one any more since Toffile died. Let them stay in the attic since they went there. I promised Toffile to be cruel to them For helping them be cruel once to him.

_Son._ We think they had a grave down in the cellar.

_Mother._ We know they had a grave down in the cellar.

_Son._ We never could find out whose bones they were.

_Mother._ Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once. They were a man's his father killed for me. I mean a man he killed instead of me. The least I could do was to help dig their grave. We were about it one night in the cellar. Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him To tell the truth, suppose the time had come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie We'd kept all these years between ourselves So as to have it ready for outsiders. But tonight I don't care enough to lie-- I don't remember why I ever cared. Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe Could tell you why he ever cared himself . . .

She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted Among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the name next morning: Toffile. The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.