THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER
61
themselves. And now because the men had only
12, 13
hours
work instead of
16, 18,
time lay like earth upon them.
Even on Sundays between milkings there was no place to
go. The village movie, baseball and football had flown off with
good times. The only excitement was the bull breaking another
fence or the horses getting on the tracks and walking toward
the city. Murf's toad had stored itself away in some hole in the
garden. Steve got himself drunk, blundered around, blabber–
tongued. Mule spent all his spare time tinkering with the tractor.
He would take it apart, oil and grease it for the thousandth
time, listen to it while it ran like a peacock. He would sit in
the saddle, be bucked up and down until the hardness in that iron
jack of his body seemed to get out of him. But he couldn't eat
or sleep with it.
The only one who seemed easy was Elsa. She cooked,
baked, made the place shine like glass, sent off to the sales order
store for clothes. She read the romances the boss's wife had
gulped down in the old days before the "Caesar's operation"
had killed her and the baby, driving the boss to bury himself in
the cidermill. She banged on the old melodeon. She made it
easier for Murf to fight the winter when old hands find them–
selves hanging by a last thread over the boneyard. At night
they played cards. She taught him the Danish game: "Will you
go into the park with me?" And the old man would wink slow–
ly, "I'll make
30
marks day and night if it's the woods instead."
But the two brothers sat together in the kitchen near the
cookstove, mum, keeping an eye on each other, all the life run
out of them.
With the coming of spring the men looked lean and blinky,
the earth dripping slowly off their lids. The sun rose like a
ballcock every morning drawing water. They fretted waiting
for the rain to be pitched out of the sky.
But Elsa had straightened out. The wild look was gone.
Her eyes were clean as whistles. She left off wearing the legging,
her fattened hips shook as she bustled about in kitchen and
garden.
The boss was making a last desperate effort to save the
mill. The new political rulers, Green Lantern Party, consisting
of wild jackass Republicans and progressive Democrats wouldn't
let old timers like him root in the pork barrels. The farm must
save the mill. He ordered more lots plowed for hay. Last year
