Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon Read Free Book Online Page B

said briefly, and I watched the pieces of meat and fat rise to the surface. “One of Irene Tatum’s. Slaughtered it myself last week. Most mysterious thing! Hog had two stomachs, if you can believe it.” She gave me a look. “Guess what I found in one of ‘em? A collar button.” Her look sharpened, as though testing me. “Wouldn’t you call that an augury?”
    “I guess I might,” I said, laughing.
    “Sure you would. Anybody would. But what sort?” she asked in a dismayed voice, looking at the sky again. The pig, she went on, had been put down for salt pork, and she had made sausage with her own casings. The leavings went for blood puddings, and now all that remained was the head which was boiling in the pot; that would be for scrapple.
    She pulled out the paddle, shook it, and laid it aside. Now she took a splint basket from a peg on the wall and marched to a corner of the garden where she began examining her plants.
    “Only a minute,” she called, snipping several sprigs with the large silver shears suspended from her waist by a length of black ribbon. Someone was sure to have iced tea at the fair, she said as I came up behind her, and a sprig of mint always went nice. She held it out for me to inhale its cool fragrance, then cut some more and offered me another sniff; “Pennyroyal. Good for colic.” When she had done, she led me to the back door, took off her boots, and coaxed her feet into the worn shoes. Enjoining me to wipe my feet, she showed me into the kitchen. She laid the basket on the table and indicated a chair where I might be seated. While I put aside my sketchbook and drawing case, she tucked the cinnamon buns in the warming oven, put out a second cup and saucer beside the one already in evidence, poured tea, brought butter from the refrigerator, and a pot of honey.
    The kitchen was low-ceilinged, small, and comfortable, and furnished with the clutter of a lifetime. One counter, on which sat a score of green bottles, with a scattering of corks and labels, was a small bottling works. Another held several shallow crocks whose contents looked as if they had only recently come from the oven: the blood puddings she had spoken of. A large tin kettle bubbled merrily on the stove. She spooned some of its contents up, blew on it, then tasted. It was not to her apparent liking, for she made a face, then bustled about, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, until the brew was more to her satisfaction.
    “How’s your family?” she asked, pursuing these small homely details.
    “Fine.” I noticed her hands, large working hands, yet marked by their own simple grace, shapely, tapering fingers and smooth oval nails. “Except for Kate—she’s been having asthma attacks.”
    “I know. Asthma.” She spoke the word sharply, marking such a condition with her personal disdain. “That child oughtn’t to have asthma.” She took out the buns and set them on a plate before me. “Help yourself.” Her nimble fingers separated the small harvest of herbs in the basket, tying them in bunches and hanging them from nails set into the edge of a shelf over the sink. Everywhere were jars and other containers, filled with various herbs, stalks, blossoms, seeds—what appeared to be an entire pharmacopoeia of country cures. “What’s that used for?” I inquired, sniffing at the kettle on the stove which gave off an aromatic, almost exotic essence.
    “For what ails you.”
    I wondered if she was bottling the concoction to sell at the fair, medicine-show style. As though reading my mind, she explained that she did a satisfactory back-door business; hardly a soul in the village didn’t stop by one time or another for one of her herbal infusions.
    Her eye fell on my sketchbook. “How’s the paintin‘ comin’?” I assured her I was working hard at it, and had a New York gallery swindled into handling my work.
    “You any good?”
    “Probably not.”
    “You’re a liar.” She beamed behind her glasses. “Let