DURING his grandfather's lifetime, the alpaca jacket which he put on when he came in for supper swung from a hook on the door of the chimney-cupboard room. It held the shape of his body and soul: the sharp angle of the sleeves at the elbow meant irascible vitality; the empty pockets, poverty and indifference; the imprint of the stooped shoulders, fatigue; and the contradictory flare of the collar at the back, pride.
He died when his grandson was twelve years old; so that Alwyn as a man could recall only the mysteriously impressive pictures which a child remembers. The clearest had a background of roses, his grandmother's cinnamon-rose bushes. Large bees staggered up and down in the scent of the old, bright thicket whose blossoms were all imperfect, hanging in great numbers on the tough stems, as if they had fallen there by chance. The bent old man came down the path from the woodshed with a look of great exasperation fixed on nothing in particular. His beard was parted in the middle, and fell on each side of a large bone button in his shirt collar; his rheumatic hands were clenched; and wherever he went, he seemed to be elbowing aside invisible people in his way.
There was little of importance left for him to do. He got up at daybreak to feed the hens which fluttered uncalled at his heels, flinging the grain behind him and taking no notice of them; so that there were sudden cries amid the drumming of their bills, and agitated flights away from his unsteady feet. His clear, wide-open eyes were often indifferently unfocused, as if the eyes of his mind were downcast. But he examined the sky at dawn with infinite care, to prophesy the weather; for he knew the meaning of sun dogs in winter (two pale blotches crouching on the horizon at the right and left hand of the east) and understood the color of clouds, and the various kinds of wind.
During the day he chopped kindling in the woodshed; cured the hams in salt and brown sugar, and smoked them with hickory chips; killed chickens for the table; and brought vegetables to both kitchens (his wife's and his daughter-in-law's), husking and silking the sweet corn, and breaking winter squashes with an ax. Above all, he worked in the garden, digging, planting, hoeing, transplanting, and weeding even patches of turnips, corn, parsley, and carrots, melons, peas, oyster plant, beets, parsnips, and early and late cabbage. He offered his grandson (then seven) one cent for every five cabbage moths that he could catch. Some were pallid, some deep yellow; Alwyn caught many of both colors with a butterfly net. But the old man said that a boy of his age ought to know that only the females laid eggs from which cabbage worms hatched, and harshly refused to pay for the others. Alwyn could not forgive him. The children were not allowed in the garden, unless their grandfather sent them to throw clods at one or two old hens who continually found holes in the fence. Sometimes Alwyn would ask timidly to go with him to look at the melons. The old man, only a little taller than the boy, stooped over the cantaloupe vines, and fingered the stems to see if they had begun to pull away from the ripening fruit. He thumped the watermelons, but was too deaf to hear the sound they made, like the beat of a small drum under the earth; and finally took from his pocket a horn-handled knife, cut a triangle in the rind, lifted it out, and peered down into the flesh: if it was pink, the plug was replaced; if it was blood-red, that melon was placed in a tub of water in the cellar. Alwyn knew as well as his grandfather how to test melons, but felt that something ambiguous was also being accomplished, that he was in the presence of an old, powerful magician, engaged in ceremonies among the vines.
Alwyn's father often said, "Your grandfather was no good at farming, but he is the best gardener in Wisconsin."
The striped beauty of the garden, its geometrical outlay of faultless plants on clean soil, suited his refined spirit better than large, weather-beaten fields. It was dear to him also because it took the place of the farm he had cleared in the wilderness, now beyond his control; for he was no longer strong enough to work on the land, and his son would no longer take orders from him. So he referred to the secrets of the soil in this or that field with the arrogance of one who does not expect to be listened to, and angrily made fun of Alwyn's father if a crop failed. Injurious things were said in anxious voices, things hardly meant to be heard; and there were, from time to time, bitter quarrels.