The Fields by Conrad Richter

Author:Conrad Richter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LAUREL HUT

SAYWARD’S family was still on the increase. Already she had borne more than her mother had. But the Lord sent them and she would provide. She had a big wheel now for wool and a little wheel for flax, and Will Beagle had set her up a loom by the wall. Her crops did well among the stumps. She had a small bunch of ewes toward wool, geese toward down, cows toward milk and leather, and a patch in flax. Now that was a pretty thing in bloom with the whole field blue as heaven. But it was a “tejus” crop. You had to plow it, drag it, sow it, weed and pull it. And that was only the start, for then it took spreading, bundling, stocking, flailing, sweating, rotting, braking, swingling and hatcheling, one after the other.

But Sayward was a hustler, ever clearing more ground and mauling rails to fence it in, her three boys a helping. This was in fall and winter. Spring and summer they worked with her in the fields. Always were they behind in their work. Making a farm out of the wilderness is a backbreaking job. In spare time Sayward sent them out scouring the woods for sang to trade, and teas and herbs for home. My, but the cabin smelled good with its joists hanging with curing dittany and pennyroyal. They had to gather linn for rope and hickory bark for light wood when candles ran low. After dark they shelled and ground corn in the chimney corner, filled the weaver’s quills, whittled pegs and gluts and plaited straw. Resolve’s job was running the bench loom while his mam spun. Oh, she and him had no letup at all. The minute supper was done, his weaving and her spinning started. Many’s the time her heart went out to him, only thirteen years old, a young body who had worked hard in the fields or woods all day, sitting there by himself at night thwacking the big loom. But he could weave good as a grown person. His tow shirting and ticking were fine as she could do herself. And his red or “yaller” flannel made undergowns and bedgowns soft and warm enough to wrap a new baby in.

Now wasn’t it a shame he had hardly any time to open a book since he got home from Kentucky, and him the biggest reader, for a young one, in these woods. Folks would stop at the cabin just to see him read. He needed no coaxing to lay down his work and get out one of his pap’s books. Soon he was so deep in it he didn’t recollect company was there. They could talk to him and he wouldn’t hear. Those folks went out shaking their heads. If they hadn’t seen it, they wouldn’t believe it, they said.

She could hardly believe herself sometimes that she was his mammy, and her hardly able to read the alphabet. Oh, she could call most of the letters, those that had tails down or an arm up and some that hadn’t.

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