Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon Read Free Book Online

Invisible Voice; the man who had recorded Robert’s talking-books. It was a daily sound that we had become accustomed to, and through the summer I had caught portions of the remainder of
Great Expectations
, followed by
Madame Bovary
, and this week
The Three Musketeers
. Robert was reading his way through the classics.
    “Darling, did you say you were going out to sketch?”
    “Mm.”
    “You’d better hurry; it’s getting late.” I finished the puzzle, tossed the paper aside, and went from the bacchante room into the kitchen, then started out the back door.
    “Wait, Ned.” Beth went to the cork bulletin board, referred to a penciled slip of paper and did a few rapd calculations.
    “Have you got some cash? Stop at the Widow’s and pay her five dollars. We owe for eggs and honey. And here—” handing me a paper sack—“take her the rest of the cinnamon buns.” She gave me an uncertain look.
    I took the bag, at the same time drawing her into my arms.
    “Mm?”
    “Kate—?”
    “I know.”
    “You
don’t
know…” Her frustration put an edge to her voice that I seldom heard. “
    “You’re not a mother. You
don’t
know.”
    I held her for a moment, then released her and said, “Don’t worry It’s going to be O.K.” But I said it with an assurance I scarcely felt.

4

    When the great back-to-the-land movement began Beth had suggested we make a clean break with the past. By mutual agreement we decided that no New York friends would clutter up our guest room, at least until Christmas. Consequently we were both isolated geographically and cut off from our old acquaintanceships as well. Which was not a problem— our parents all were dead, and what friends we might elect to have come and visit could well wait.
    Still, though I had never confessed my doubts to Beth, at times I worried. Where were we to fit into this yesteryear place? Apart from the Dodds, whom would we have for friends? How was Kate going to fare at Greenfarms School? Were we crazy, burying ourselves in a one-horse town, where it was necessary to drive way out to the turnpike to find a shopping center or to see a movie, where people still believed that what was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them? How could they talk to me of painting, or I to them of corn?
    Therein seemed to lie the answer. When in Rome… Though I had never been intimate with nature, next year I would plant corn. I would plow up the field at the foot of the property and put in corn and beans and tomatoes and early peas. I would get gardening books; I would learn about the soil and how it might produce, even for a city dweller. Formerly a lover of the pavements, now I would be a lover of the earth. There, at the corner of Penrose Lane, on this bright morning of the Agnes Fair, I laid claim to the land, swearing fidelity to it. I felt it was as Beth had said: today was a new beginning.
    I turned left onto Main Street and continued in the direction of the Common. The Widow Fortune’s house, several blocks along Main, was almost obscured behind a corn crop so high it hid a man’s hat. I had heard Robert Dodd say the old lady talked to the corn to make it grow, a concept I found fanciful, supposing plants must grow as they chose, or as they received sustenance; but growing because someone talked to them…
    I went down the lane at the side of the small, gabled house and into the dooryard, where I set the sack of buns on the back-porch steps, next to a pair of worn shoes. Beside these was a bunch of flowers in a leaky pail. A large black iron pot sat over a smoking fire in the dooryard, the contents simmering and making thick plopping sounds. Savoring the aroma, I discovered other smells, the pungent musk of damp earth, the dusty tang of broken flowerpots and manured trowels, a tinge of fertilizer. Good country smells. Everywhere I looked, I sensed an earthy richness, an appreciation of growing things, plant life and animal life, all of life. There were