The Hiccups

Hungry Hollow

I was on my way to spring house to thaw out old Amos. All week long I had felt winter was over. Ever since the later afternoon light had held more blue than purple in it. I was now certain having seen fuzz on the buds of the pussy willows. I had started at dawn. First, setting the washer boiler bubbling on the kitchen stove, then building a fire outside under the soap kettle so there would be plenty of hot water to soak the frost out of him. I had made sure there was food left too. Enough cornmeal and bacon to see him through to the June peas and the milk Betsy would give starting April when she calved. Now I felt quivery, anxious to see him. The elated way I had felt in those first years when he would come back whistling from a ship. To stop the trembling I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders, stepping over the places where the sun had melted through the snow. The brown spots that marked the months since that morning when I had put him away in the spring house.

It hadn't been as lonely as I had expected. Living back there in that one room of the squat farm house. Parceling out to myself the mouthfuls of mush and tea. The way in which in the early days every Ontario woman had to do. Watching the scissors of the hills clip the days shorter and shorter as the winds came, creaking the pins of the old house. Even when I lay awake in the darkness and ran my hand over the cold sheets where old Amos had lain so long beside me, I never doubted that he was merely asleep. All through those months nothing had broken my belief that this had been the way to keep him alive. That is, nothing but the one exception—the beast looking more than anything else like a hank of black wool dragged along the ground.

Our trouble had started with my breaking my glasses last spring. The night before the late frost the nipped the apple blossoms and wilted the seedlings Amos and I had set out in the back field. Resetting with plants from Montpellier had thrown them late getting in the potatoes and when the crops were knee-high, ready to strip, the hail did that for them, shredding the leaves into worthless ribbons, not enough to make it worthwhile putting into the curing shed. Then, right after the hail, the potatoes blighted and within three days the vines were twisted and brown. When I dug them with the tined fork, there was only a bushel no bigger than walnuts. At Halloween, Betsy dried up—a month ahead of time. Cutting off our butter and milk for cooking. But somehow Amos didn't seem upset by any of this bad luck. He just went on reading his bible at night and spending more and more time sitting, staring into the fire. He ate more too. It wasn't as if my father hadn't warned me about these Ontario men long before I had married Amos. "Appetites like draft horses, you'll never be able to fill him up," he had said. Not that Amos hadn't turned out to be a good provider. Once he had set his hand to farming our upland he could pitch two loads of hay to any Ontario man, having the chest and arm muscles of a seafarer. But now he was seventy-eight, come spring spending most of the daylight dozing by the fire. Not that it was so bad having him under-foot, as his tarnation appetite—like my father had warned me.

It was November in the morning while I was laying the strips of bacon over the top of the pot of beans that I got the idea. Something about covering the beans made me recall a tale that my grandfather used to tell me. It had happened a hundred years ago, in the next county, when this whole part of the province belonged to another part of the province and the Indians used to sweep down every fall, burning the barns and driving off the cattle. My grandfather had been just a young shaver one year the food ran low but he could remember what they had done with the old folks. How they had built pine boxes and carted them out to the ledge. I glanced over at Amos feeling guilty at my thought. He was yawning, bending over to draw on his felt boots. It would keep him from suffering, I told myself. For he so loved to eat. Now, it was dropping below zero at night it wasn't a mite too soon. I would start it tonight.

When he closed the door on his way to the barn to throw a bundle of fodder into Betsy's rack, I knew there was no time to lose. I would need something to make him sleepy. The hard cider half frozen in the entry would mix well with the beans. I spooned out a place in the pot and poured in a cupful. By the time he was back, smelling of the stall, I had his last meal on the table. His plate piled high with beans.