All day while I waited for Hank to come back with his ma, I thought about what I was going to say to her, and what she would think of my cooking and housekeeping. I had fixed up the bedroom upstairs next to ours, cleared out all the dust and rags and cardboard boxes, and went up to the attic to look for a single bed. Mr. Pendergast said the bed was there, but when I climbed up to the loft there was such a mess I couldn’t see the bed at first. There was fruit jars and old chairs, and cobwebs hanging from everything. There
was some roots hanging from rafters that I thought was ginseng. But everything was covered with dust.
When I finally found the little bed I had to scour it with soap and water. And I washed the floor in the little bedroom and the one window and hung curtains there. Mr. Pendergast watched me and didn’t say much. Since the quarrel with Hank the second night, he had been a little quieter, though he still liked to snap at me from time to time. Some days he didn’t get out of bed until after noon. When he set at the table in the kitchen while I was working, he complained that he didn’t have no relations but his stepchildren, and they never come to see him.
“How long has it been since Mrs. Pendergast died?” I said.
“Four years,” Mr. Pendergast said. “And I ain’t seen my stepyounguns since the funeral.”
I was not good at waiting for somebody. When I’m waiting I get flustered and hot and think about all the things that could go wrong. And the more nervous I am, the more I worry and get aggravated. When I’m waiting time slows down till it mocks me. When I keep waiting for somebody to come I feel like I’m going to fall to pieces. The only thing to do is not wait at all, but to get on with whatever you’re doing.
After I fixed up the bedroom for Ma Richards, I killed a chicken and plucked and dressed it for supper. And while the chicken was frying, I baked some biscuits and made an apple pie out of Northern apples from a tree beside the pasture. I was worried about my cooking because Rosie had always done the cooking at home. I never really had learned to cook except what I taught myself.
I set the table and Mr. Pendergast come into the kitchen and set down by the stove when it got dark. I left the chicken on the stove with a lid on to keep it from drying out, and took the biscuits out of the pan and put a cloth over them to keep them warm. The clock said it was past six.
“Maybe they been killed,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Bad luck to say such things,” I said.
I heard a noise outside and run to the window. But it was somebody else going by in a wagon.
“Won’t do no good to watch for them,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“What will do some good?” I said.
“They may have run off the mountain,” Mr. Pendergast said.
Instead of waiting for his supper, Mr. Pendergast got the jar of molasses and had hisself some hot biscuits with butter and molasses. It was one of his favorite things to eat. I just hoped he didn’t eat up all the biscuits before Hank and Ma Richards arrived.
“We always look forward to people coming,” Mr. Pendergast said, “then look forward to their leaving.”
Finally it was near seven o’clock when somebody opened the door, and there was Hank in the lamplight and this little dried-up looking woman beside him. Because Hank was a big man I expected Ma Richards to be big too. But she was built like a banty hen, with black eyes and a sharp chin. Her head was tied up in a scarf and she stalked into the room like she was claiming it for her own.
“I’m cold and I’m so hungry my backbone has rubbed a blister on my ribs,” she said. She walked around the kitchen looking at shelves and at the stove and bread safe.
“We’re mighty proud to have you come,” I said. I didn’t know whether to hold out my hand or not. She looked at me and said, “You’re not as tall as I expected.” I had just thought how short she was, but I didn’t say nothing.
“This is Mr. Pendergast,” Hank said. Mr. Pendergast stopped eating and wiped his hand on his pants. But when he held it out Ma Richards didn’t take it.
“Are you the Pendergast that was run over by a horse?” Ma Richards said.
“That was my brother,” Mr. Pendergast said. “He’s been dead twenty years.”
Ma run her finger along a shelf and then looked to see if there was dust on it. She lifted the lid of the pan of chicken and steam come out of the pan. “Why don’t we have something to eat?” I said.
“I’m so cold I need a cup of coffee,” Ma said.
“It won’t take but a minute to boil coffee,” I said.
“Is the beans already ground?” Ma said.
“No, but won’t take a second to grind them,” I said. “If you can wait that long.”
“Good, for I don’t like stale coffee,” Ma said. Ma acted so demanding and uppity I couldn’t hardly believe it. I wanted to tell her she should have brought her own coffee, but I held my tongue.
Hank and Ma set down at the table with Mr. Pendergast. I took a lantern out on the back porch and ground some coffee beans. After I come back in and started the coffee to boiling I set down at the table.
“A woman should always be ready for her guests,” Ma Richards said. She put butter and then molasses on a biscuit. “She should know what they will need,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know why I said I was sorry. It just come out. I guess I was too mad to say how I really felt. I’d had everything ready for over an hour.
“We was late because an axle broke,” Hank said.
“We’re lucky we wasn’t killed,” Ma Richards said. She held a spoon up and looked at it in the lamplight. I was glad I had polished all the silver.
“I had to patch it up with a hickory stick,” Hank said.
“Never been so scared in my life,” Ma Richards said. “We was on the edge of a cliff when the buggy wheel broke. Where did you get that buggy?”
“It belonged to my pa,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Are you sure it wasn’t your grandpa?” Ma Richards said and laughed. Mr. Pendergast laughed with her.
After I set down at the table, with Ma Richards at the end where I usually set, Hank said a longer blessing than usual. And it was more politely said too. “Lord make us truly thankful and worthy …,” he begun. I thought how careful he was around his ma. She was such a tiny woman, and yet Hank acted like a little boy trying to please her.
“I’m so upset I don’t think I have any appetite,” Ma Richards said when the blessing was over. I passed her the platter of chicken and she took a drumstick. She held it up in the lamplight and looked at the crust, which had got damp from waiting so long in the pan.
“A crust won’t stay crisp if there’s too much flour on the skin,” she said.
I was going to say it was waiting so long in the pan that made the crust soggy, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to sound like I was arguing with Ma Richards. She was not only my mother-in-law, she was my guest. And I was just learning to cook.
Ma took a biscuit and sliced it. The biscuit had got a little soft from waiting under the cloth also. Ma held the biscuit half up in the lamplight. “A biscuit that ain’t cooked long enough will never be crisp,” she said. I felt my face get hot. Ma Richards was testing me in front of Hank and Mr. Pendergast. I wasn’t going to let her get my goat. I passed her the rice and the green beans. I passed her the butter and molasses. I seen the coffee was boiling and got up and poured her a cup. I asked Mr. Pendergast if he wanted any coffee.
“Couldn’t sleep for a week if I had coffee for supper,” he said.
“Anybody with a clear conscience can sleep,” Ma Richards said.
Mr. Pendergast started to answer but then couldn’t seem to think of what to say. He couldn’t admit his conscience wasn’t clear,
and he couldn’t argue that it was. Ma had made a statement that was unanswerable. I set down at the table again and helped myself to the rice.
Ma Richards took a sip of her coffee like she was testing it. “Is this the house where a woman died of TB?” she said.
“That was my wife,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“I heard she was sick a long time,” Ma said.
“Nigh on to three years.”
Ma looked around the kitchen like she expected to see Mrs. Pendergast still there, in one of the dark corners. “I hear germs from TB will stay in a house for years,” she said.
“No germs has bothered me,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“What room did she die in?” Ma said. She sipped the coffee and took a bite of biscuit and molasses.
“The front bedroom,” Mr. Pendergast said, “where I still sleep.”
“You’ve been a lucky man,” Ma said. She took a bite of her chicken then put the drumstick back on the plate and spread more molasses on a biscuit.
“How did your husband die?” Mr. Pendergast said, his mouth full of chicken.
Ma Richards looked at Mr. Pendergast like he was accusing her of something. She spread the molasses careful and then took a bite of the biscuit. “Died setting on the porch,” she said. “He was helping me to churn and just pitched forward into the yard. The churn spilled all over the place and chickens run to peck the clabber.”
“Died of a stroke?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Died of a stroke or a heart attack,” Ma Richards said.
“Must have eat wrong,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“He eat what I fixed him,” Ma said, “which was plain, wholesome fare.”
“I had a warning that Pa was going to die,” Hank said.
“What kind of warning?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“My brother Russ and me was setting on the milkgap waiting for Pa to come back from mill,” Hank said. “It was getting late, where the air has got gold in it, and it was time for Pa to be home. We was looking down across the pasture and I seen Pa coming up the slope. Except he wasn’t wearing overalls, but a new suit of clothes. And I thought, He must have been to town and bought a new suit.”
“Was you dreaming?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Russ seen him too,” Hank said. “If it was a dream we was both dreaming it. We watched Pa walk across the pasture, and when he got close enough to speak I was going to say how come you have got a new suit. But just when I opened my mouth he was gone.”
“Where did he go?” I said.
“He just disappeared,” Hank said. “Both Russ and me had seen him, and then he just vanished in the evening air.”
“And you never seen him again?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“We looked around all over the place,” Hank said. “And after a few minutes we seen Pa coming across the pasture again. Except this time he was wearing his overalls and his old black hat and carrying the sack of corn on his shoulder.”
“And he didn’t know nothing about the suit of clothes?” I said.
“We asked him about the suit, and he thought we was just fooling him,” Hank said.
“And you never did explain it?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“We never could figure it out,” Hank said. “But a few weeks later Pa died all of a sudden. It was a portent, but we didn’t know how to cipher it.”
“The Lord sends us a warning,” Ma said, “but we ain’t listening.”
“There was a portent before Pa died,” Hank said, “and one after.”
“What do you mean after?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Uncle Calvin seen Pa after he died,” Hank said.
“How could he see him?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“After Pa was dead and buried, Uncle Calvin seen him in church at Sunday service, setting in his usual seat,” Hank said. “He was setting in the Amen Corner and he was singing like he always did.”
“Did he speak to him?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“After the service he was gone,” Hank said. “Except Uncle Calvin seen him there the next Sunday, and the next. But after three Sundays he didn’t see him again.”
“It was a sign,” Ma Richards said.
“A sign of what?” Mr. Pendergast said.
“A sign of how much he hated to leave us, even to be with the Lord,” Ma said. “It was a sign he will always be watching over us.” Ma took her handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed at her eye. Then she replaced the handkerchief and begun to butter another biscuit.
“I think the dead are watching us all the time,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“Of course they are,” Ma Richards said. “That’s why we should be careful what we do and what we say. They are with the Lord and watching over us. At least some are with the Lord.”
“We don’t know a tenth of what there is to know,” Mr. Pendergast said. “Why we don’t even know a sixth.”
The kitchen was so hot I had to go outside. I went out to the back porch to get the pie I’d put there to cool. Soon as I opened the door I felt the cold wind. It was good to get out of the kitchen, but I hurried back in with the apple pie and took off the lid.
“That wind has ice in it,” Ma Richards said.
“If it comes a freeze we should kill the hog,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“It would have to be a Saturday for me to help,” Hank said.
“You help me butcher the hog, I’ll split the meat with you,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“I’ll help you out,” Hank said. “And Julie can too.” He sounded just like Papa or Mama back at home. If there was heavy work it just naturally fell to me. But we sure needed the meat.
“I can help,” I heard myself say.
IT WAS ON a Monday that I helped Mr. Pendergast kill and butcher his hog. Hank had to work at the brick kiln in Eaton, or he would have stayed and done the heavy work. The killing had to be done when there was a freeze. Then after the meat was salted down in the smokehouse it didn’t matter if the weather turned warm again.
“You shouldn’t ask a girl to help butcher hogs,” Ma Richards said that morning.
“I always helped Papa,” I said. “Wasn’t nobody else to help.” I didn’t like to butcher hogs, but if it had to be done I might as well go ahead and do it. And I didn’t want to take any advice from Ma Richards.
“Hog killing’s no work for a girl,” Ma said, like she expected that to be the end of it. She was used to giving orders and having her sons obey them. Hank didn’t argue with her so I didn’t either.
“Maybe you could wait till Saturday,” Hank said to Mr. Pendergast.
“The weather may have warmed up by then,” Mr. Pendergast said.
“I can help today,” I said, and didn’t even look at Ma Richards.
Hank had to leave at daylight, and I got up to fix grits and gravy and eggs. I packed a dinner bucket full of biscuits and boiled eggs, and before Hank left Ma Richards opened the bucket to see what was in it. “A man working all day has got to have some belly timber,” Ma said, and she looked at me when she said it.