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| They sat in a little circle in a nest, 7 tiny quail |
I had a friend, old Walter, who lived in Possum
Run Valley on a farm known as "My Ninety Acres." Years ago when
Walter Oakes was young, everybody used to speak of "My Ninety Acres"
with a half-mocking, half-affectionate smile, because Walter always talked as
if it were a ranch of many thousand acres or a whole empire. But as time passed the mockery went out and
"My Ninety Acres" became simply the name of the farm.
Old Walter had a right to speak of it with
pride. It wasn't a bright new place, but
the small white house with its green shutters looked prosperous, the huge
fire-red barn was magnificent, and there were no finer cattle in the whole
county.
The place had a wild natural beauty. The patches of lawn were kept neatly mowed
but surrounding them grew a jungle of old-fashioned flowers and shrubs. Beyond the neat vegetable garden the romantic
shagginess continued. The wire along the fence rows was hidden beneath
sassafras and elderberry and wild black raspberry. The place was shaggy not because Walter was
lazy - there was no more hard-working man in the whole Valley -
but because Walter wanted it like that, Walter and Nellie.
I never saw Nellie Oakes, but my father told me
she had been the prettiest girl in the Valley.
She taught school until, at 22, she married Walter. People wondered why she chose Walter, who had
only 90 acres of poor hill land he had just bought, when she could have had any
catch of the Valley. But I know from all
the long story it was simply because she loved him.
Nellie died when her second son, Robert, was
born. But sometimes when my father and I
walked about the fields of "My Ninety Acres" with Walter and his
boys, I wasn't at all sure she wasn't there, enjoying the beauty and richness
as much as Walter himself. "Nellie
wanted me to put this field into pasture but we couldn't afford not to use it
for row crops," he would say, or, "It's funny how many good ideas a
woman can have about farming. Now, Nellie
always said . . . "Sometimes I'd return to the house almost believing that
I would find there the Nellie who was dead before I was born, waiting with a
good supper ready.
Walter never married again, though a good many
widows and spinsters set their caps for him.
He didn't leave "My Ninety Acres" save to go into town or to
church on Sunday with the boys, John and Robert.
I tramped over the hills to
"My Ninety Acres" [after 25 years]. As I came
down the long hill above the farm I thought, "This is the most beautiful
farm in America." It was June and the herd of fat cattle stood
knee-deep in alfalfa, watching me. The
corn was waist-high and vigorous and green, the oats thick and strong, the
wheat already turning a golden-yellow.
As I went down toward the creek I saw old Walter
with two sheep dogs moving along a fence row.
I stood for a moment, watching.
The old man would walk a little way, stop, part the bushes, and peer
into the tangled sassafras and elderberry.
Once he got down on his knees and for a long time disappeared completely.
Finally, the barking of the dogs as they came
toward me attracted his attention. He
stopped and peered, shading his eyes. "I know," he said, holding out his
hand, "you're Charlie Bromfield's boy." I said I'd been trying to get over to see him
and then he asked, "And your father?
How's he?"
I told him my father was dead. "I'm sorry," he said, very casually
as if the fact of death was nothing.
"I hadn't heard. I don't get
around much." Then suddenly he
seemed to realize that I must have seen him dodging in and out of the fence
row. A faint tinge of color came into
his face. "I was just snoopin'
around 'My Ninety Acres.' Nellie always
said a farm could teach you more than you could teach it, if you just kept your
eyes open.... Nellie was my wife."
"I remember," I said.
Then he said, "Come and I'll show you
something."
I followed him along the fence row and presently
he knelt and parted the bushes.
"Look!" he said, and his voice grew suddenly warm. "Look at the little devils."
I could see nothing but dried brown leaves and a
few delicate fern fronds. Old Walter
chuckled. "Can't see 'em, can you?
Look, by that hole in the stump."
They sat in a little circle in a nest, none of
them much bigger than the end of one of old Walter's big thumbs-seven tiny
quail. They never moved a feather.
Old Walter stood up. "They used to laugh at me for letting
the bushes grow up in my fence rows."
He chuckled. "Last year Henry
Talbot lost ten acres of corn all taken by chinch bugs. Henry doesn't leave enough cover along his
fence rows for a grasshopper. He thinks
that's good farming!" He chuckled
again. "When the chinch bugs come
along to eat up my corn, these little fellows will take care of 'em."
We were walking now toward the house. "Nellie had that idea about lettin'
fence rows grow up. I didn't believe her
at first. But I always found out that
she was pretty right about farmin'."
At the house, old Walter said, "Come in and we'll have a glass of
buttermilk. It's cooler in the sittin'
room." The buttermilk was such as I
had not tasted in 30 years - creamy, icy cold with little flakes of butter in
it. "You're living here alone?" I asked. "Yes."
I started to say something and then held my
tongue, but old Walter divined what I meant to ask. "No.
It ain't lonely. Nellie used to
say she didn't understand the talk of these women who said they got lonely on a
farm. Nellie said there was always
calves and horses and dogs and lambs and pigs and that their company was about
as good as most of them women who talked that way."
The Sunday afternoon visits to "My Ninety
Acres" became a habit, for I found that old Walter knew more of the
fundamentals of soil, of crops, of livestock than any man I have ever
known. We were not always alone on those
Sunday walks because neighbors and even farmers from a great distance came
sometimes to see Walter's farm and hear him talk about it. As he told the history of this field or that
one, and what he had learned from each, a kind of fire would come into the blue
eyes.
One day Robert came on his annual visit, and
drove over to see if I could help persuade the old man to retire. "He's 75 now and I'm afraid something
will happen to him alone there in the house or barn. But he's stubborn as a mule and won't quit. "This morning he was up at daylight and
husking corn in the bottom field by seven o'clock."
We were both silent for a time sitting on the
porch overlooking the Valley. The green
winter wheat was springing into life in the fields beyond the bottom pasture
where the Guernseys moved slowly across the blue grass. "Honestly, Bob," I said, "I
don't see why we should do anything, He's happy, he's tough as nails, and he loves that place like a
woman." Then, hesitantly, I said, "Besides, Nellie is always there looking
after him."
A startled look came into the son's eyes. "Do you feel that way too?"
I said, "Nellie is everywhere in that
'Ninety Acres.' She's out there husking
corn with him now."
"It's the damnedest thing," Robert
said. "Sometimes I think the old
gentleman gets Nellie and the 'Ninety Acres' a little mixed up."
We finally agreed that there wasn't anything to
be done. I said I'd keep my eye on old
Walter. And so every day for two years
I, or somebody from the place, went over.
One Sunday afternoon in early September he and
I were walking alone through one of his cornfields. It was fine corn, and as we came near the end
of a long row, he stopped before a mighty single stalk which had two huge
nearly ripened ears and a third smaller one.
Old Walter stopped and regarded it with a glowing look in his blue eyes.
"Look at that," he said. "Ain't it beautiful? That's your hybrid
stuff." His hands ran over the stalk, the leaves and the ears. "I wish Nellie could have seen this
hybrid corn. She wouldn't have believed
it."
As I watched the big work-worn hand on the
stalk of corn, I understood suddenly the whole story of Walter and Nellie and
the ninety acres. The rough hand that
caressed that corn was the hand of a lover.
It was a hand that had caressed a woman who had been loved as few women
have been loved, so deeply and tenderly that there could never have been
another woman to take her place. I knew now what Robert's remark about Nellie and
the ninety acres getting mixed up had meant.
It happened at last. I went
over one afternoon and when I could not find old Walter or the dogs anywhere I
returned to the house. I heard
scratching and whining in the ground-floor bedroom, and when I opened the door
one of the sheep dogs came toward me.
The other dog lay on the hooked rug beside the bed, his head between his
paws. On the bed lay old Walter.
He had died quietly while he was asleep.
Walter was buried beside Nellie in the Valley
churchyard.
Robert
wouldn't sell "My Ninety Acres." I undertook to farm it for him, and
one of our men went there to live. But
it will never be farmed as old Walter farmed it. There isn't anybody who will ever farm that
earth again as if it were the only woman he ever loved.
