Read Online Satan's Bushel by Garet Garrett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Garet Garrett
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back at them and did not know they turned to stare.
This he placed as one of the high moments of his life. I envied him. Fancy seeing the country in that way for the first time—receiving one’s impressions of of it originally on a fresh negative, through a lens of full power, with nothing expected, nothing familiar, nothing to be taken for granted.
A breeze was stirring. The wheat was in gentle motion. It seemed always to be running toward him, eagerly, excitedly, expectantly, like a friendly dog on crouched steps with its eyes glad and its ears flat. He wished to pet it, stroke it; he heard himself talking to it. After some groping he found a word for the feeling he experienced at that moment. He was flooded, he said, with a sense of profound wisdom. Profound is mine. He said simply wisdom, but with an accent I cannot reproduce. Twice he turned back to the first great field of wheat. The original thrill was there. Almost he could not bear to part with it. Mind you, I’m filling in. A man could not talk that way about his own emotions. Dreadwind at least could not. What he said was: “Twice I went back to the first field of wheat I saw.” There he paused in the narrative, sat for a moment in reverie, and then with a little start went on.
At each turn or rise in the road he stopped. Once there was a sudden view of an old house between two great trees at the far edge of a field of wheat; beyond the house was a brook, back of that a rise of ground and then some kind of sky. Nothing unusual perhaps. It appears to have been such a glimpse as sometimes frames itself in reality, a bit of perfect natural composition that gives one a mysterious sense of self-projection. I am saying this. What it reminded him of was a woodcut of spring in the almanac his mother kept on a nail in her kitchen cupboard. That woodcut had remained vividly in his mind all these years. Always when he thought of the country he thought of that. It had been another world. And here it was, that other world, in being. He was walking in it.
When the sun was low he asked for supper at a farm-house, choosing a small one. The farmer, in his stocking feet, was rocking on the side porch. Having adjusted his mind to Dreadwind’s request he looked out over the fields instead of turning toward the open door, and called in a loud voice: “Maw! Here’s a man wants to eat supper with us.” A long silence; the farmer motionless, gazing into his fields. Then a pinched voice from the kitchen: “There ain’t much to eat. If he will be satisfied with what I can pick up. I don’t know.” Dreadwind’s satisfaction was pledged. “Well, it ain’t ready yet,” said the pinched voice. “Give him a chair.” And whereas until then indoors had been tomblike, now began suddenly a series of promissory sounds—the rattle of stove lids, a clangor of pans, a clicking of dishes, and very soon the sizzle of meat falling into hot fat.
“Wheat looks very good,” said Dreadwind at a hazard.
“Been looking at it myself,” said the farmer. “You can’t tell from the road. Sometimes you can’t tell until it’s threshed. Wheat you think’s fine threshes light. Wheat you think’s spindly and light does better, though that ain’t so often as like the other way.”
“The country looks prosperous,” said Dreadwind, after a dead pause.
“Does it?” said the farmer. “Maybe so.”
“Isn’t it?”
“That’s according to how you look at it,” said the farmer, aggressively crossing his knees the other way.
The seam was open. He began to complain. He complained of the weather, of pests, of a certain man’s luck who thought it was good management, of the price of farm implements, of the Government for never doing anything, of the trusts that controlled its do-nothingness, and of speculators who got all the profit in everything. Dreadwind noticed that the barn needed mending. The windmill, the water trough, the hog fence, the hen shed, the porch floor sagging
This he placed as one of the high moments of his life. I envied him. Fancy seeing the country in that way for the first time—receiving one’s impressions of of it originally on a fresh negative, through a lens of full power, with nothing expected, nothing familiar, nothing to be taken for granted.
A breeze was stirring. The wheat was in gentle motion. It seemed always to be running toward him, eagerly, excitedly, expectantly, like a friendly dog on crouched steps with its eyes glad and its ears flat. He wished to pet it, stroke it; he heard himself talking to it. After some groping he found a word for the feeling he experienced at that moment. He was flooded, he said, with a sense of profound wisdom. Profound is mine. He said simply wisdom, but with an accent I cannot reproduce. Twice he turned back to the first great field of wheat. The original thrill was there. Almost he could not bear to part with it. Mind you, I’m filling in. A man could not talk that way about his own emotions. Dreadwind at least could not. What he said was: “Twice I went back to the first field of wheat I saw.” There he paused in the narrative, sat for a moment in reverie, and then with a little start went on.
At each turn or rise in the road he stopped. Once there was a sudden view of an old house between two great trees at the far edge of a field of wheat; beyond the house was a brook, back of that a rise of ground and then some kind of sky. Nothing unusual perhaps. It appears to have been such a glimpse as sometimes frames itself in reality, a bit of perfect natural composition that gives one a mysterious sense of self-projection. I am saying this. What it reminded him of was a woodcut of spring in the almanac his mother kept on a nail in her kitchen cupboard. That woodcut had remained vividly in his mind all these years. Always when he thought of the country he thought of that. It had been another world. And here it was, that other world, in being. He was walking in it.
When the sun was low he asked for supper at a farm-house, choosing a small one. The farmer, in his stocking feet, was rocking on the side porch. Having adjusted his mind to Dreadwind’s request he looked out over the fields instead of turning toward the open door, and called in a loud voice: “Maw! Here’s a man wants to eat supper with us.” A long silence; the farmer motionless, gazing into his fields. Then a pinched voice from the kitchen: “There ain’t much to eat. If he will be satisfied with what I can pick up. I don’t know.” Dreadwind’s satisfaction was pledged. “Well, it ain’t ready yet,” said the pinched voice. “Give him a chair.” And whereas until then indoors had been tomblike, now began suddenly a series of promissory sounds—the rattle of stove lids, a clangor of pans, a clicking of dishes, and very soon the sizzle of meat falling into hot fat.
“Wheat looks very good,” said Dreadwind at a hazard.
“Been looking at it myself,” said the farmer. “You can’t tell from the road. Sometimes you can’t tell until it’s threshed. Wheat you think’s fine threshes light. Wheat you think’s spindly and light does better, though that ain’t so often as like the other way.”
“The country looks prosperous,” said Dreadwind, after a dead pause.
“Does it?” said the farmer. “Maybe so.”
“Isn’t it?”
“That’s according to how you look at it,” said the farmer, aggressively crossing his knees the other way.
The seam was open. He began to complain. He complained of the weather, of pests, of a certain man’s luck who thought it was good management, of the price of farm implements, of the Government for never doing anything, of the trusts that controlled its do-nothingness, and of speculators who got all the profit in everything. Dreadwind noticed that the barn needed mending. The windmill, the water trough, the hog fence, the hen shed, the porch floor sagging
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