Milkweed Ladies by Louise McNeill Read Free Book Online

stubble and whirred like the jarflies in the tallest trees. The cornfield had to be cultivated twice every season before it could be “laid by,” and that was, to me, a hateful task. There were always eight or ten acres of corn rows, thousands of hills, all grown thick with bindweed, ragweed, and smartweed. Every stubborn weed had to be dug out, shaken off, and thrown into the open furrow. But after five rows, we could rest for a few minutes under the apple trees, eating green apples and playing green music on the grass blades we held between our thumbs. As we blew on the grass blades, they whickered in the summer stillness, and the striped chipmunks chattered along the rail fence.

    After corn hoeing came haying time, with horses to ride and great frothy buckets of Mama's ginger beer. There was always abig crew of men, our uncles and cousins who traded work with G.D.; and there was the clattering music of the mowing machine, the buggy rake humping its rusty teeth across the field, and the fat shocks hauled in by the plow horses to the stacking Poles and the mow.

    When the oats and wheat ripened, the cradlers would come with their red cradles and the song of the whetstones began in the early light. Then came the dry song of the swishing grain, the harsh stubble crunching underfoot, and the men racing each other as they cradled the grain into windrows and bound the hot, golden sheaves.
    One hot August morning, Snowd Kellison would bring his threshing machine. Its four horses and big red contraptions would come wallowing across our field road, and then the roaring, spewing, and pouring would begin. The men hauled in the wheat sheaves, feeding the great thresher's mouth; the chaff blew out of the chaff-blower, and the wheat grains poured down into the sacks. The men sacked the wheat, hauled it to the granary bin, and poured it into the bin like a golden sea.
    At noon, twelve or fifteen men came to the back porch to wash, snorting into the pans of cold water and drying themselves on the roller towels. In the dining room,the women and girls dished up steaming bowls of food. The men would take great helpings on their plates, fork into the meat dishes with their eating forks, and laugh and drink buttermilk, wiping their mustaches on the backs of their hands. There would have to be three or four shifts at Captain Jim's long table, the women and children always eating last. On the table would be three kinds of bread, three kinds of meat, and big steaming bowls of potatoes, beans, and corn roastin' ears. For “side dishes,” we had jams, jellies, schmierkase , pickles, coleslaw, and sliced tomatoes; and, for dessert, cake and peaches, “floating island,” and blackberry pie with clotted cream.
    I always ate in a hurry so I could go out on the porch and listen to the men talk as they smoked, chewed, and spit off the porch edge. Always during these hours, they talked of the place called Over the Mountain, where they hunted, fished, and gathered ginseng. I could see it all rising up before me as they talked, the hunter men walking through the trees. Then G.D. would knock his pipe out, and they would all go back to the field.

    In August too was blackberry picking up on the pasture hill. We all dressed in men's overalls, cut off the toes of long stockings,and drew the stockings over our hands and arms to fend off the cat-claw briers. We would hitch a lard pail around our waists with a discarded belt so we could pick berries with both hands. The briers were fierce; the spider webs clung to our faces in a particularly lecherous fashion, and the towhees fussed and quarreled at us from the thickets for stealing their berry crop. At noon we went to the cow spring to sit on a limestone boulder and eat our lunch of homemade bread-and-butter sandwiches and long strips of cucumber dipped into little paper packages of salt, and we made drinking cups from the silvery green leaves of the tulip tree. By late evening, we could