A Part of the Sky (5 page)

“No, not yet.” Mr. Gamp smirked. “But a hundred forty-four dollars a year might climb beyond your ability to meet. Four years at that figure of obligation adds up to over five hundred.” His mouth smiled, but not his eyes. “Plus taxes.”

My body became wet. “Taxes?”

“Youngster, your annual property tax falls due in September, like everyone else’s. In the past twenty years, plenty of farms fell into foreclosure and forfeit. Tax failure. Current rate is seven per acre. So, come the first dawn of September, you’ll owe the township thirty-five dollars. Or else.”

I wanted to walk out of Mr. Gamp’s office and then run home, to stand on my own property, not
his, and breathe my own sweet air. Yet I couldn’t seem to budge a boot.

The banker stared at me. As his eyebrows raised, he said, “Say, I’ve seen you somewhere before. That face of yours looks familiar. Where was it?”

There was no use in lying.

“At Mr. Tanner’s. About two weeks ago.”

The lines in Mr. Gamp’s face deepened. “So,” he said slowly, “now I do recall. I was ill that day. Fighting a flu. A gentleman has a right to spirits for medicinal purpose.”

“Ben Tanner took thirty-seven stitches. And he didn’t have a right to even one.”

“Here,” said Mr. Gamp, suddenly standing to hand me a pen. “Put your X mark to this paper,” he snapped, “where it says June.” He pointed to the line with his finger.

Glancing down, I saw where Papa, unable to sign his name, had crossed so many marks, for so long a time. I wanted to touch and bless every X he’d made, something that a banker such as Mr. Gamp wouldn’t understand.

Instead of X, I wrote Robert Newton Peck on the line. Papa would have been proud.

Snatching the pen from my fingers, Mr. Gamp said, “You are a rude and uppity boy. You don’t
know your place. However, business is business, and the bank will credit your account with the customary twelve dollars. Good day.”

“Thank you, sir. You’ll see me again in July, and August, and every single month until the farm is all ours.”

Picking up my hat, I left smiling.

6

School let out.

Becky Tate had coaxed me to attend with more devotion, so I wasn’t worried much about failure. But I didn’t want to flunk English or hurt Miss Malcolm. Now there were more mature matters on my mind. Taxes due in September plus monthly bank payments might threaten the deed to our farm. The death of Solomon was one problem. A second one was now walking behind me.

As I led Daisy, our milk cow, by a rope and halter, I headed over the ridge toward Mr. Tanner’s. Ben and I had talked it over and shook on a bargain. I’d work three days for free if his bull would freshen Daisy.

Arriving, I was about to tie the loose end of her rope to a fence post when Ben hobbled out of the house to greet me.

“Beowolf’s ready for her,” Ben said, eyeing my old cow. “The question is, will she be ready for him?”

“He’d always do her before.”

“True. But a bull has preferences. The younger the heifer, the more eager he is to mount and mate, providing her scent is strong enough to bait him.”

Ben’s sober face warned me.

Walking beside him, I noticed a gimpy gait, as though every step cut into him.

“Are you mending, Ben?”

“Gradual, a day at a time. You can’t kill a Vermonter. We just wear out like a pair of pants. Last evening, Bess pulled out my stitches. Smarted near as bad as going in.”

“Mr. Gamp did wrong to you.”

“Indeed so. But Mr. Gamp regretted it and stopped by here the other day to apologize.” Ben smiled. “In fact, he brought me a cheese.”

“He still made a mistake with his mare.”

“Robert, we all make a misstep now and again. Every man has a weakness. I’d be flimsy if I held a grudge against Haskell Gamp.” Ben sighed. “Forgiveness heals a hurt better than iodine or thread.”

The kindly way he said it made me respect Benjamin Franklin Tanner all the more.

Leading Daisy, we rounded a corner of Ben’s big cow barn. There he stood. Beowolf, a black-and-white Holstein bull. A giant. Ben looked at him with pride, then at me, and bent a slow grin.

“I’ll never forget that Sunday afternoon,” he said. “You were maybe half as high as now. You stood here with your folks, and so did our preacher and his wife, Reverend Hazeltine and Mrs.”

“I don’t recall.”

Ben laughed. “Well, I do. Bess mentioned it recent. We were all standing right here, admiring Beowolf, when he took a big breath and roared one mighty bellow. Mrs. Hazeltine said … 
My, what a pair of lungs
. And you, young Robert, pointed at his hinder, and said … 
Those aren’t lungs. Them are his
 … and your ma muffled your mouth not a second too soon.”

I felt my face redden. “Did I say that? If so, I certain am sorry.”

Ben rested a hand on my shoulder. “No need. There’s nothing evil or dirty about nature. What made it all so amusing was the fact that your father attempted a smile. And that was a feat he’d perform about once a decade.” Ben sighed. “I miss Haven. Always a good steady neighbor. All salt and no pepper.”

I couldn’t say anything. When my father died,
it was as though God had ripped the sun from out of my sky. I become a lantern with no light.

“Bess and I were never blessed with children. Now that we’re aging into ancient, Rob, we sort of think of you as ours. Not that I’d ever try to replace your father. No one could replace Haven Peck. But both Bess and I feel close to you and your folks.”

“We feel likewise.”

Daisy muttered a soft
moo
.

“Smell him, Daisy,” Ben said to our cow. “Help yourself to a whiff of my bull.”

“You smell too, Beowolf,” I said hopefully. “It’s spring.”

Walking behind her, Ben lifted Daisy’s tail, smelled her, and touched her. Then he shook his head.

“Little chance,” he told me. “No heat. She’s like winter. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a pool table. It’s June, boy. But for that cow of yourn, it’s the dark of December.”

Beowolf didn’t even glance our way.

Ben pointed at his bull. “That old Romeo knows more than you, me, and Daisy all put together. We got a pair of disinterested parties, Rob. My advice to you is to end her.” Kneeling, he felt her udder. “Empty as a Monday church.”

“What’ll I do with her?”

“For your heart’s sake, turn her out into your meadow for a spell. Let her graze, fatten, and enjoy the summer. But by autumn, best you not waste even one wisp of hay to board her all winter. You can’t afford that. Daisy will never again lactate. But don’t delay, Robert. Best you sell her while she’s still alive. If she dies, you’ll have naught.”

“Sell her? Who’d buy a dry cow? What would she be good for?”

“Dog meat.”

I closed my eyes. “No. I can’t.”

“Wake up, boy. Yes, you can because you’ll have to do just that, and no other. There isn’t a choosing. Only an end. Daisy’s had a good life among you Pecks. Now, young man, best be growed-up enough to face what’s so. These are hard truths they don’t teach you in school. Like it or no, it’s what I do with my old cows. You’ll get five dollars for her and no more.”

“How would I go about selling her?”

“Go to Clay Sander. Your pa killed his hogs for many a year. Clay’ll handle it.”

While I was leading Daisy back to our place, I stopped on the ridge that separated the Tanner property from ours. From up here, I could breathe air so fresh that I could almost drink it, and look
down to our house and barn. We had Solomon no longer. And soon, there’d be no Daisy.

My hand touched her warm body on the right side, where my father would so often rest his head while milking her.

“Daisy,” I said, “why do we always have to lose so many animals and people that belong to us? Why?”

Sometime I’d have to bury both Mama and Aunt Carrie. One by one. Even though it was a warm June morning, the thought of their going turned me chilly. Ben Tanner had told me, less than a hour ago, that I would have to get growed-up. That meant a Shaker accepting of both life and death. There was no way to part one from the other.

“Dog meat.” I said it aloud, so I would toughen enough to swallow what’s real. The words knifed into me. Standing there, looking down at our little farm, I wanted to be a boy again, with all around me that I knew and felt a part of. And no banking.

Perhaps I’d been too rude to Mr. Gamp.

The urge to apologize had simmered inside me since that Saturday morning at the bank. Neither my father nor my mother would have spoke what I told him. My feelings were right, yet my reason was wrong.

Ben Tanner, in his silent way, had forgiven Mr. Gamp’s error. And if Ben could do it, tore apart, then so could Rob Peck. Made little sense to carry a hate. The load of it was burdensome. Too heavy to haul.

Above me, the sun had been behind a cloud, but it sudden shined on me, warming the all of my person.

“Daisy,” I said, “let’s go home.”

Together, we walked down off the ridge to our place, to where we belonged. Peck land. Bending, I scooped up a clod of earth. In my hand it felt fresh and fertile, a woman awaiting seed.

The day was still young. So I turned Daisy out into our meadow and made for the barn, and the many bags of seed corn that had rested there all winter long.

Later, I was broadcasting. For years I’d watched Papa do it, walking our cornfield in May or early June with a sack of seed beneath his left armpit. He’d walk along steady and slow, at an even pace, never slowing, grabbing a handful of corn kernels. Then he’d hurl it in a arc before him, again and again, until his sack no longer bulged but sagged to empty. I felt proud to walk where he had walked. Following my father.

The seeding took all day. Farming by hand is
slow work. Yet with each hurling of my arm and scattering of seed, I felt renewed. Born again.

This wouldn’t be table corn. It was silage. Field corn. With no Solomon and no Daisy, I could turn these two acres, that Solomon and I had plowed, into a money crop. For taxes. A pity that neither Solomon or Daisy would winter on what I now was sowing. Yet, in a way, I was working in their honor; they prospered on our land.

I broadcasted my final bag.

Sun would shine, and the wind and rain would help bury every seed. Easier than covering it with a hoe. Nature would be tucking my corn kernels into bed like wee children. All snug.

Deep in the earth, a seed would begin to sprout and prosper. I’d broadcast. God, the Giver, would do the rest. Standing alone on a fresh-seeded field, the flow of farming was uplifting me. Up through my bare feet. An old Shaker saying crossed my mind, something Papa had told me: “Gratefulness is the highest note in the hymn of prayer.”

Years ago, when I’d attended a local one-room schoolhouse during my early years of education, Miss Kelly had said likewise.

“Teachers,” she said, “are like farmers. We are in charge of the green and the growing. Every morning, a farmer goes to his garden. Yet, in a
way, a teacher is luckier because my garden comes to me.”

For some reason, I kept on standing out in the field of fresh-seeded corn. Alone with the Almighty. The pair of us. And I couldn’t have been granted a more worthy partner. Right then, I decided that I’d never beg the Lord to carry me through. But only that He would afford me the back to do it.

“Hear me,” I told the sunshine. “I’m no longer a boy. You seen fit to promote me to manhood, so that’s what I’ll be. A man.”

Looking at my skinny arms, I began to wonder if’n I’d muster up the might. No way I’d ever share my doubts with Mama or Aunt Carrie. To them, I’d be a rock. Their hope. Six months before my father died, he’d prepared me … “It’s got to be you, Rob. There’s nobody else. It has just got to be you.”

I blinked at a blue sky.

7

Time for haying.

Wading through less than two acres of hay, I could feel the green shafts of timothy swishing against my bare feet and ankles, and smell the fresh-cut clover.

The hay was ripe, ready to mow. Light green, almost a gray. Below, low to ground, the thicker clumps of clover seemed Sunday dressed with flowering balls of lavender and white.