Free Plains Song by Wright Morris Page A

it.”
    Enough time passed to allow the water to settle in both pails. “I guess it’s your yard,” he said, stooping for the pails, and she held the screen open until he had entered, “but don’t you ask me what you plan to do for horsepower,” and she never did. It was her yard, it would be her grass, and she would manage to care for what was hers.
    Already the yard had some shade from the trees near the house. As the hedge grew taller she would be able to walk from the house to the pump out of the sun glare. Cora seldom left the house without a bonnet. The worst possible complexion for this country was the one she had brought with her. Just a ride in the buggy and the skin of her nose dried and peeled. In her outdoor chores she wore cotton work gloves; if it rained she wore Emerson’s two-buckle galoshes. At no time did it cross her mind how she might look. Against the cool morning air she would slip on the coat or sweater not worn that day by Emerson. The tobacco odor that saturated his clothes was not disagreeable to her in the open. It neutralized the acrid smell of the henhouse. Without clearly grasping why, Cora had felt dispersed, her workday too short to deal with the endless chores of the farm, but once she had determined her own domain she could see what each day had accomplished.
    On the backside of the cobhouse, where it wassunny and windless, she cleared the ground for a seedbed and a garden. Emerson was not lazy, but anything he hadn’t done the day before, or had to be told to do, he had to ponder. Orion plowed it into furrows for her while Emerson was making up his mind. Right away he disagreed with what Orion had done, but it was too late. He was good with the cows, as Orion wasn’t—they would moo and balk whenever he came near them—but if Emerson stuck his head into the henhouse the hens would stop laying. The cackling might go on far into the night. It worked better if everybody had their place, Belle helping with the washing and the children, Cora in the house and yard, Emerson in the barn and the fields. One thing he did better than anybody else was sit in the yard, on Sunday, with the babies, or lie out on his back and let them crawl and paw over him. Belle startled Cora by saying, “He wouldn’t do that for long if they was boys, not girls.” This saying tantalized Cora, but it provoked her more than it pleased her. Why would the lumbering Emerson, like a big friendly dog, rather be crawled on by two little girls than by boys? It was Belle’s way to blurt out remarks Cora was slow to forget.
    Emerson didn’t spoil the girls, the way Belle did, or make a fuss over them in the manner of Orion, who scared their mothers half to death the way he’d take Sharon Rose and swing her by the heels. She shrieked when he did it, making a sound like a calliope. As the summer ran down, Cora found the time to sit, after washing the dishes, on the cool of the porch. In the evening hush, the chickens quiet, she could hearEmerson muttering to his cows and the squirt and froth of milk in the pail. Madge slept in a clothes basket, free of the tireless Sharon Rose, and Cora was free of Belle’s ceaseless prattle. More and more, it seemed to Cora, Belle’s prattle was less an expression of her high animal spirits than a need to break the silence around her. Orion took his hounds and went off hunting whenever he could.
    Cora had tried, and failed, to put a stop to the cats’ following Emerson and his milk pails to the house. She had her chickens, he said to her, he had his cats. While they waited at the screen, he would crank the separator, then put the pail into the yard for them to lick clean. He would wash himself, using her yellow soap, lathering his face and neck but staying clear of his ears, wetting her floor as he splashed himself with water, blowing and wheezing like he was drowning. He would empty what water was left through the