Free Plains Song by Wright Morris Page B

screen, then stand there drying his face and hands, watching the label of the Pillsbury flour appear on the wet cloth. At that point, if he thought it might rain he would say so, otherwise he was quiet.
    Orion made the little girls dolls out of corncobs, with tassels of long taffy-colored hair. Belle sewed them up bean bags, with rag doll faces, that came with the sacks of flour and sugar. Cora had surely not lacked dolls as a child, but she frowned on the attention the little girls gave them. Madge seemed more content with her dolls than Sharon Rose. Was that because they were silent, and would listen to
her?
Both little girls spent hours hiding in the cobhouse just toannoy Cora. Belle seemed like a child herself, the way she would cry out and get excited. The word “Shar’n!” was like a bird’s cry in her shrill, high-pitched voice. Of course, the child never answered. She was usually to be found behind the sacks of popcorn that were waiting for Emerson to shell them. Belle was fearful for Sharon whenever she was missing, but took little comfort in her presence now that she was expecting. “What would she do with another girl?” Emerson asked. What might she blurt out to a question like that?
    Belle had spells of moodiness, and Orion might wake up and find her missing, and have to search for her. Walking about at night relieved her. Seated with Cora, a basket of mending between them, she would fall asleep. Neither Sharon Rose nor Madge held her attention, and she seemed indifferent to Orion. It was Cora who would find him, and put a plate at the table for him. Two days before Christmas Orion was off somewhere, hunting, when Belle began her labor. Before Emerson could fetch anybody, she gave birth to a child with Orion’s blond hair, a birthmark on the left forearm. It seemed so frail and lifeless Cora feared it might be dead. Dr. Geltmayer arrived, but nothing he could do would stop Belle’s internal bleeding. She died peaceful, looking like a young girl with tangled hair and a deathly pallor. She shouldn’t have had another baby so soon, Dr. Geltmayer said. If Belle could have spoken up for herself, what would she have said to that? Cora wondered. A Bohemian girl, who still talked her own language, came from her people nearBlair to help with the new baby. She was a strong girl, and a good worker, but her strange speech confused the little girls. If Orion had had his own way, would he have buried his wife on the farm? Emerson thought so, and said so, and the brothers were so close to blows Cora threw dippers of water on them. Orion left the farm and was not seen again until the day before Washington’s birthday, coming back from the Ozarks with a new saddle horse and three more hound dogs.
    Cora had fretful, squalling children to care for in the face of Emerson’s fury. She could hear him cursing to himself as he milked the cows. What had begun as a pig farm was now Orion’s dog farm, but the folly of it relieved Emerson’s anger. That, and the fact that he knew Orion was crazy. He had been crazy to marry a hill girl in the first place, and what had rubbed off on him had only made him worse. He was good for nothing but shooting off his guns and living with his dogs.
    The new girl, Anna Pilic, would have made a good wife, but Orion seldom set his eyes on her. He left his house if she came over to clean it, and cooked his own meals. For her part, Anna Pilic could not lose her fear of his dogs. She did not ask, but Cora sensed that she wondered what sort of woman it was who had lived with them in her house. What sort of woman Belle was, from where she had come (even her age was unknown to Orion), and why she had departed in the manner she did, leaving the child nameless and unknown to her, occupied much of Cora’s thought. She could not accustom herself to Belle’s being dead. Cora missed her, in the hot, steaming kitchen, or runninglike an animal between the houses,