
Julie worked for Doc Simmons then, and explained that five months is too far along for that.
Afterward, Varia got with child about every other year—pretty remarkable in our family—and always
went off to her gramma, and never came home with anything more than her suitcase. After about the third
time, we came to expect it, but she and Will kept trying.
By then we'd come to know that she was strange in other ways than her miscarriages, her tilty green
eyes, and laughing at odd times. Because us kids were growing up, and Will didn't look all that young
anymore—but Varia didn't look any different. In fact, when I was twenty-five, she still looked twenty,
though she had to be around forty by then, at least.
That's the year a big old white oak barber-chaired on Will—split up from the stump, kicked loose about
ten feet up, and fell on him. White oak's treacherous that way; the main reason folks log it is, it's the only
tree that's much good for wet cooperage, so it's worth a lot. The one that got him had a butt better'n
three feet across. He'd chained it and all before he ever picked up the ax, and tightened the chain with
wedges, but the grab hook broke off! Ed Lewis, on the other end of the saw, said all he could see of Will
was his left boot and right arm; the rest of him was under that big oak butt, squashed flat as pie crust. It
shook Ed so bad, he quit logging; got a job at Singleton's, delivering coal and hogged stovewood. After
they got the tree off Will, Byron Haskell, the undertaker, said he never before saw anything looked like
that, and hoped never to again. The casket was kept closed, of course.
Pa said one thing about it was, Will died too quick to suffer.
Ma commented on how brave Varia was, what a strong front she put up, though she did look a little
pale and drawn for a while. Afterward a couple of fellas around there tried paying court to her. Pretty as
she was, the prettiest woman in Washington County, you might have thought there'd be more, quite a few
more, but there was only the two. Unless you count old Lennox Campbell drooling on his vest. Could be
they were scared off by how young she looked for her age, plus when it came to giving birth, she seemed
sterile as a freemartin.
Or maybe they knew without knowing that she wasn't shopping for a man.
She stayed on the farm for more than another year, all by herself. Didn't seem right, even when you
knew she was forty or whatever. A new Watkins man was going around, and when she answered the
door to him, he asked if her mother was home. She did her own milking, dunged out her barn, gardened,
fed her cows and chickens—stuff like that. Sold her team to Pa, though, and her hogs, and Pa agreed
we'd farm her land for her on shares. She helped with things like shocking corn and oats, the way she'd
always done. Even slim as she was, she was strong, and no one ever knew her to get sick, not even a
cold.
At first Frank and I took turns going over and doing whatever heavy work there was to do; it was less
than forty rod from our place to hers. But after a little, it seemed like it fell to me to do most of it, which I
didn't mind. It was all family. We kept expecting her to get tired of being alone like that. Figured she'd
either marry or go someplace she had blood kin. Evansville, probably.
Finally, after more than a year, she asked Pa if he'd like to buy her place. If the terms weren't too hard,
he said, so they sat down together and worked out an agreement. That was in February; she figured to
leave in April. And suddenly the whole family realized how much we'd miss her—Ma, Pa, all of us.
Right after that, I was over there with the spreader, getting her manure spread before plowing. I was
pitching on a load when she came out to the barn and told me she was driving into town. (Will'd bought a