A World Lost: A Novel (Port William) by Wendell Berry Read Free Book Online Page B

think he liked Minnie best. For him,
maybe, the female world turned on an axis held at one pole by Aunt
Judith and at the other by Minnie Branch -Aunt Judith, with her bred-in dependency, her sometimes helplessness, ill with fright and self regard,
childless and forever needy; and Minnie, who was fearless, capable, hardy,
fecund, unabashed, without apology or appeal. Minnie could cook and
keep house for what amounted to a small hotel, split firewood, butcher a
hog, raise a garden, work in the field, shoot a fox, set a hen or wring her
neck. She was a large, muscular, humorous, plain-faced woman who
wore a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. You could hear her laugh halfway to
the back of the farm. I can see her yet with her white hens clustered at
her feet, picking up shelled corn; she is leaning back against the weight of
the child in her womb, fists on hips, talking and laughing.

    She conceived and birthed as faithfully as a good brood cow, welcomed each newcomer without fuss, prepared without complaint for
the next. There was a running joke on this subject that Uncle Andrew
carried on with Minnie and Jake.
    "Well, by God, Jake's been at it again! He's as hot as a boy dog!"
    Minnie would throw back her head and laugh: "Haw! Haw!"
    And Jake would grin and shake his head in wonder at himself. "They
going to have to do something about me."
    And when Minnie lay down on the bed, in the big, starkly furnished
bedroom next to the kitchen, to suffer yet another birth, who would be
there, anxiously hovering about, dispensing clean towels and hot water,
eagerly bathing the infant who pretty soon appeared, but Aunt Judith
and Momma-pie? They had no more to do with Minnie Branch in the
ordinary course of their lives than they had to do with the farm. But Minnie's birth pangs drew them like some undeniable music, and their conversation afterward was full of the news of their participation.
    Beyond the obvious reasons, Uncle Andrew liked Minnie, I think, because she made nothing special of him; she did not see him as anything
unexpected. She liked him wholly and asked for nothing. He was comfortable with her.
    One overcast afternoon, I remember, Uncle Andrew and I were sitting
in Minnie Branch's kitchen, talking with Minnie and another woman I
knew only as Mrs. Partlet. The older children and the hands, one of
whom at that time was jockey Partlet, Mrs. Partlet's husband, had been
fed their dinner long ago and had gone back to the field. The firebox
of the cooking range was almost cold. Uncle Andrew and I were there perhaps just because Uncle Andrew enjoyed being there and did not particularly need to be anyplace else.

    Minnie sat in a big rocking chair between the stove and the door
into the next room. She was rocking slowly back and forth, with Coreen,
her then-youngest, lying asleep in the crook of her arm. The second
youngest, Beureen, was asleep in a crib just beyond the door. Angeleen,
the third youngest, was standing quietly at Minnie's knee, looking as
though she would like to climb into her lap. At the moment, Minnie was
ignoring other people's wants. She had a chew of tobacco tucked into her
cheek and was taking her usual big part in the conversation. Now and
then she would turn her head and spit several feet into the ash bucket
behind the stove. Mrs. Partlet, a plump, pretty woman, sat in a straight
chair by the window. Her hands lay in her lap, and as the talk went on
she fiddled with her fingers. I sat at the end of the table nearest the stove
in one of the dozen or so straight chairs, no two of which were the same.
Uncle Andrew sat at the other end, by the back door, his chair tilted onto
its hind legs, his left arm lying along the edge of the table, his right hand
in his pocket. Between the stove and the window where Mrs. Partlet was
sitting, a large washtub full of soaking diapers sat on the floor.
    The conversation went on casually enough for a while, and then it became humorous, and