The Grandmothers/Chapter 4

ALWYN'S grandmother came to Wisconsin in 1847 as a child of three. She grew up among bearded men, hunters and trappers. George Hamilton, her eldest brother, could not read or write; Enoch had lost one arm in a sawmill; a cousin named Tom Gore also made his home with them. The ironwoods around the large cabin smelled of skunk, whose black-and-white pelts, with skins of mink and beaver, turned inside out on boards, swung from the lower limbs. The three men shot squirrels, rabbits, young coon, and deer for food, and hunted foxes and timber wolves for sport. They went by night to the trees where the passenger pigeons roosted, picked them off the boughs, wrung their necks, and tied them in bunches with string. They said: "Pretty soon, smart fellows like those Towers'll spoil this country. Make a woman's country out of it, just like Kentucky. We're goin' to git out then, west."

Firearms and pouches hung upon pegs, wet boots stood by the fire, and venison smoked inside the fire-place. Their grandmother, whom they called "the old woman," fingered her corn-cob pipe in one corner; she was stone deaf and hated the men. Their mother grumbled, but indulged them as if they were sickly children. She said, "The world is a man's world; women might as well make up their minds to it."

Rose and her sister Adelaide walked four miles through the woods to attend school, stoning the bushes into which a fox or a badger had vanished, terrified of stags. The schoolhouse occupied a clearing on one of the Indian trails, and two or three times a year the pupils were allowed to stand outdoors to watch a tribe of Pottawottamies pass. The ponies were unshod; their hoofs were broken and spread apart, their hocks deformed by spavins; and their ears, full of burrs, flapped with each stumbling step. Kettles in pairs, rude implements, and tent poles, lay across the withers. The round-headed babies like dolls of copper, borne by the squat women on foot, gave no sign of life though horseflies crawled round their nostrils. A pack of dogs followed, one gray bitch whining and running back and forth in the leaves. The men had formidable mouths, and many of their hard eyes were veiled by cataracts. They rode without saddles, on folded blankets, the muscles of their bent knees lying flat on the bone like thongs of leather.

Rose remembered how her grandfather had been killed in Kentucky. He had been in the sugar bush, stirring the maple sap which boiled over the iron rim of the kettle. When he looked up he had seen two savages who sat in a tall tree, watching him; he had shot them, one after the other; their half-naked bodies had fallen in the underbrush. After that other Indians had waited their chance, and one day had scalped him. Indians like these. . . . But these were harmless. Why didn't they fight? Rose wanted to fight for them or against them, because they were male and emaciated, and looked neither to the right nor the left. Down the corridor of light branches and stiff trunks they vanished, leaving behind an odor of wild humanity, dogs, and dried meat.

Often Rose walked up and down the trail, hoping to meet them by herself. One afternoon men galloped from village to village with word that the Indians in Minnesota were on the warpath, burning and killing and coming south. She went to stay with a neighbor, Mrs. Aaron Smith, who had six children and whose husband was absent. They watched for two nights with shotguns laid across their knees, the little ones tossing in two beds, the eldest wide awake with excitement. The mother trembled continually, but whispered to Rose the news of the community. They listened, clutching the oily guns, but could hear nothing but the struggle of the branches with the wind. Rose was frightened when a child began to cry, or when dogs whined round a carcass in the forest, but she would not show it; for she felt like a man, defending the weak woman and her babies. Meanwhile, in the far north, tuberculous tribes were howling to keep up their courage; then all the ponies, spotted with sores, faltered, and they rode no farther; it was the last raid in that part of the West. Rose liked Mrs. Aaron Smith and was sorry to go home.

She and Adelaide played truant from school, creeping over the hill, careless of punishment, but eager to enjoy a holiday before they were caught. Their cousin Tom Gore was hoeing in the potato patch; he shouted: "Get back to school, young hussies! Get back there!" and chased them and pelted them with clods. They fled all the way back, not stopping when they left him behind, panting with pleasant excitement.

When she was thirteen years old Rose had a mature woman's breasts and a boy's awkward elbows. Tom Gore tried to kiss her one day when they were alone, and ran after her. She climbed up an apple tree. He caught her ankle and threatened to tear her skirt, but she whipped him with a small branch until he went away. She complained to her brother George, and Tom Gore received a thrashing. After that he called her a tattletale whenever he dared, but seemed to bear no grudge.

During August and September the girls picked wild berries for the market. One morning Rose caught yellow-and-pink spiders to put in Tom Gore's bed, keeping them in her hat. Then the two girls heard laughing voices and went in the direction from which they came—boys' voices at the swimming hole. . . . They crept into a bunch of elderberry bushes. Adelaide whispered, "It's wicked, it's wicked," and Rose covered her mouth with one hand so she could not betray their presence. Adelaide hid her face and would not look.

Sumach dangled its leaves like parrot feathers in a round, black pool. Shirts, trousers, and shoes lay on a mound of butternut roots and sod. A naked boy stood there, white and gaunt; he splashed in among the others. Rose wanted to be swimming with them; the sight of male bodies did not trouble a girl reared in a cabin of careless men; she was comparing their grace and their energy. There were seven: one sat cross-legged on a log which lay over a bed of cress; on the round chest of one, older than the others, red hair glistened in the spotted light. One was lean, one was short and clumsy, one weak; and the strength of the strongest was common. Six climbed up on the bank and put on their clothes; under cover of their shouts, Adelaide, whose modesty had grown tedious, slipped away in the woods.

When Rose looked at the one who was left, she did not want to be swimming there, feeling instead a surprising, sweet embarrassment; it was the fourth of the Towers, Leander. Hilary, the youngest, lay in the grass, also watching his brother, with sad, bright eyes. The others did not wait. Leander floated on his back, the color of amber in the water. He was two years older than Rose, and she preferred him to all the rest. His blond curls washed in his eyes, and he laughed with a sound of little splashes of water lifted and let fall. Resting on one elbow, Hilary waited uneasily. Rose envied him because, by the accident of birth, he was Leander's playmate; they worked side by side in the fields, and slept in one bed. At last they too dressed and ran down an aisle of poplars, leaving Rose alone in the elderberry bush.

As she walked slowly back to the berry patch, hanging her head, a fox crossed her path; it looked like a dog whose pelt was on fire—she did not even throw stones at it. She found the basket of berries and her hat; the gold-and-rose spiders had returned to their webs, but she had forgotten them.

She grew tired of the life at home. She wanted to look like a lady, like Arabella and Ursula Raeburn, like young Mrs. Henry Tower; and it was difficult to bathe and dress amid the gibes of her brothers, under Tom Gore's agitated eyes. She thought that short skirts made her resemble a boy who is too fat; so a yellow taffeta dress was made for her, with a hoop and seven rows of ruffles. She forced Adelaide to pierce her ears with a darning-needle, and her grandmother gave her a pair of gold earrings she had brought from Kentucky. She put up her hair in a chignon and trained a damp curl over each ear. Her cheeks were as rough and pink as a cinnamon rose.

Then she took a school three miles from home. She was slow at books; the schools she herself had attended had been unruly; so each night she studied the exercise in the speller and the arithmetic problems which she would have to teach next day. She was not afraid of half-grown men, and understood tomboys; the school board congratulated her upon her discipline. The large girl in a grown woman's dress who returned to Hope's Corner at the end of each week had reason to be proud.

On Saturday nights Henry Tower held a singing school in the Corner schoolhouse. He struck the key with a tuning fork and taught them to sing by the scale, Do re mi fa so la ti do. All that family were singers; Henry led the men with a pure voice which sounded lonely among the rest, and his lovely wife Serena led the trebles. Hilary still sang with the women—his voice, very sweet and shrill, less like a voice than an instrument—sitting beside Serena, seeming to sing only for her and Leander. Rose also sang for them. She wanted nothing in the world, neither in the wilderness she knew nor in the countries she would never know, but to be acceptable to that family, loved by Leander.

At the end of an evening she said to him: "Will you take me home? I'm frightened to-night."

He only blushed; but Henry had heard, and he whispered, "Leander, behave like a gentleman."

Serena pressed her hand and said, "I hear you're doing finely with your school."

Hilary followed them as if it were a matter of course. But in the dark she could touch Leander's arm, stumbling more than she would have done if she had been alone, and the tips of her fingers tingled.

Soon the neighbors said they were sweethearts, and they were together wherever they went. Miraculously, Leander did not seem to see that she was less beautiful than Serena. He never touched her, but she had read no books and did not expect caresses. Love meant gentleness and courtesy; it meant having many opportunities to enjoy his tireless grace, and being proud as if it belonged to her, and forgetting that she herself was too heavy and too tall. Her failure to understand him moved her as nothing else could. And when that which passed her understanding was kind, she did not require kisses to feel a tumult like that of wild bees over their hidden honey.

They stood under a mountain ash in the autumn. He wore a corduroy jacket the color of his hair and skin. He had grown a beard which did not hide the blush and the smile which took turns in his face. She knew that Hilary was watching them, perched on a log fence; she wondered why, but she did not care. The young tree drooped with its clusters of mature berries, like drops of something suspended over their upturned faces, drops bright as blood, not human blood—the blood of angels. "It's a beauty," Leander said. Rose forgot that Hilary existed and that she existed; there were only two things in the world—the tree and Leander.

If she had been imaginative, if she had ever feared anything which was not physical danger, she would have feared Hilary. Staring at her, his eyes grew large, as if they were a great pair of tears about to fall; and he bit his lips until they bled. One evening she thought it was love; another evening, when he muttered, "Girls who pretend to be afraid of the dark" she knew it was hate. When Leander was not with them, he was friendly and timid. They met by accident in the woods and gathered mushrooms all one afternoon, and she taught him to recognize a rare variety, almost indistinguishable from others which are poisonous.

Then the Civil War began. Her brothers went quickly, well pleased with the adventure. John, Harrison, and Henry Tower enlisted.

One night she stood with Leander by a gate. Dreamily he said—but with a tone which was like that of decision in a dream—"I suppose I'd better go."

Rose turned sick; she had not thought of that. She clenched her fists in hatred; he was too young, and he was hers. . . . Then there followed this realization, novel for the primitive girl: that was the sort of thing Towers did; there were ideas and ideals, quite separate from themselves, quite unimportant, which they cared about, so much. . . . She would learn to care, she who wanted to be a Tower—it was time now. So she laid her fingers against his chest. and felt, through the coarse flannel, his breath going in and out in a miniature tide; and one word was almost impossible to pronounce. "Maybe," she said.

So he enlisted. Hilary refused to be left at home; his mother wept, and he wept with her, but they could not change his mind. And the farewell night came upon them all, more suddenly, it seemed, than any night had ever come upon its own day. The spring stirred all about Rose and Leander when they said good-by—beckoning sprays of wet leaves, flowers he would not find in the South; Rose had no eyes to see. She was thinking that if he died down there, it would mean that death was more living than life and more rich, with a blond boy in its arms. . . . Then she felt the awkward softness of his kiss—the first kiss; she smiled, because that was a woman's duty, and because his lips were sweet; and he turned away to go to war, with his little brother.

When Rose's school closed, Serena Tower asked her to live with her. She had been received into the family; she was proud. There was little money, though Henry, who had enlisted as a musician, sent home his pay. Rose grew fond of Oliver, the slight child with languorous eyes, and came to love Serena more than anyone else in the world but Leander. Serena was never in good health. Rose did all the work, trying to make the men they hired care for Henry's farm as well as he would have done, a difficult task for the daughter of shiftless farmers. She took a man's responsibilities, and learned the cost of a man's gentleness.

It was a long war, long as an illness during which one knows that at its end the time will have passed like an hour of sleep. There were letters, brief, monotonous, and precious. The draft began; Serena and Rose were glad that the inevitable had not come to them as an officer of the law. The widowed mother of five soldiers sat with them on the porch, thinking chiefly of the fifth, who had already broken her heart. They knitted socks, sewed military garments, and scraped linen to make gauze for wounds, praying that it would be placed on the wounds of strangers. Lists of casualties were published. Then Leander wrote that Hilary had disappeared. His mother fell to the floor, and refused to eat for many days. After that it was their duty to express hope tirelessly, without any hope. Serena fell desperately ill. Suddenly peace was declared. Rose had not time to feel impatience for the home-coming, caring for the sick woman, the child, and the old mother for whom alone there was to be no home-coming.

Leander was the first to return. Rose drove to the station. He stood before her, heedless and gaunt. He kissed her. They could not speak. He got into the carriage; she took up the reins. She told him that Serena was ill; they said nothing of Hilary; the sound of water had gone out of his voice. They drove to his mother's house. Never again in her life was there to be a moment as cruel as that in which he stumbled forward, fell on his knees, and hid his face under the old woman's hands. Rose closed her eyes; it was not enough she could hear their sobs; and she herself was all but a stranger. So she got into the carriage and drove away, quite unnoticed.

That afternoon he came to his brother's house. Serena, who had been lying in an apathy which no voice could penetrate, wept when she heard his voice, and cried out, "No, it is not Henry!"

They left Adelaide in the sick room and walked toward the hills. Finally Rose paused and said (for the first time to him and the only time in her life): "I love you. Are we going to get married?"

The pupils of his eyes, large and dark, were shaking. In that voice of some other man, a man who was still in the South, he answered: "I don't. . . . In the war. You don't know—Try to understand. . . ."

But Rose did know and did not need to understand. That knowledge and lack of knowledge could not be endured quietly, standing up, and not alone. She gathered up her heavy skirts and ran, like the wild Hamilton girl who had ceased to exist.

She was crouching on a porch. A man was driving into the yard and getting out of a buggy. She had pressed her head between her hands so long that the gold earrings had left marks on her cheeks like scars.

In that moment she knew what life was made up of; she would never forget again. As if from a great distance, by transference from someone else's thought, she knew that Serena was delirious—it was the doctor who was walking up the path—there was work to be done.

Two days later Henry came. He was too late; Serena could not speak. After the funeral Rose went home, thinking that the rude cabin would never give her up again.

At the end of the month Leander went to California. Henry Tower was living alone with his little son, and one day asked Rose to marry him. She felt as if she had been dead, in an apparent eternity of lazy hunters, their gibes and their quarrels; and suddenly, in the widower's melancholy voice, permission to return to the earth she loved was granted. Leander had not wanted her, but she was acceptable to the Towers.

It was her duty not to let her husband see how she grieved for his brother; he could not comfort her. She did not hope to be loved, and she realized once more how rough and homely she must appear beside the memory of Serena. She continued to grow heavier; the coarse roses did not disappear from her cheeks, but came to resemble dead rose leaves, covered with a network of tiny veins.

Life was not sad, though Henry was obstinate and sad. She never understood him. Would she have understood Leander? She often found him unreasonable; but after argument and protest, when his eyes grew abstract as if they were staring at things which did not exist, or when a rare, bitter word escaped from his tight lips, she folded her arms and gave in. Her mother-in-law died, saying at the end, "Now I know that Hilary is dead; he will meet me on the other side."

Little Oliver died, and a week later Polly was born. Four more children were born; their names were Ada, James Arthur, Ralph, and Evan. There were deaths in the family, but her children were spared; she gave thanks to God.

Then an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out in the community. Henry and five-year-old Ralph fell sick. An old woman named Minerva Foote came to help her. Henry was delirious and called her Serena. He and Ralph got better. The little girls fell sick. Rose cried by the hot kitchen stove, the hot sunlight pressing through the shutters.

Old Min Foote said: "Now you stay away from them. Who's going to cook for the hungry mouths if you come down with it? I'm childless; I've nothing to fear. They're not yours, anyway—they're God's now, till the fever is past."

Polly and Ada died. Life was teaching her methodically; this was the second lesson; she was a strong woman and could learn. On the day of the funeral the heat was broken by a thunderstorm. The cheap little coffins were of the same length. Rose attended two other funerals that week, children's funerals, saying, "It shall never be said that my sorrow has hardened me toward others."

In the spring of 1884 she received a letter from Leander, which read:

DEAR SISTER ROSE,

I want to come back to the old country. If you'd rather I didn't, please tell me so. I've made some money and would like to buy a little house near you and Henry. After these long years, I love my own people more than ever before. Love to Henry and your children.

Henry said nothing. Rose was glad he was coming back to Wisconsin. It was his home. He would be forty years old and greatly changed, as they all were. He would be her brother now, yet not like a brother, for she understood her brothers; and the Towers were men she could never understand, men she could only love, quite humbly.

Leander's return marked the middle of her life. Thereafter, absorbed in maternal duties and matriarchal reminiscences, she took every disappointment for granted and wanted nothing for herself. In fact, she was more like the strong, serene grandmother, perfectly willing to be old, whom Alwyn knew, than like the girl who had loved Leander.