First Day Finish

by JESSAMYN WEST

1

THEE’S home,Lady,”Jess told his mare.They had made the trip in jig time.The sun was still up,catalpa shadows long across grass,and mud daubers still busy about the horse trough,gathering a few last loads before nightfall,when Lady turned in the home driveway.

Jess loosened the reins, so that on their first homecoming together they could round t he curve to the barn with a little flourish of arrival. It was a short-lived flourish, quickly subsiding when Jess caught sight of the Reverend Marcus Augustus Godley’s Black Prince tied to the hitching rack.

“Look who’s here,” Jess told his mare and they came in slow and seemly as befitted travelers with forty weary miles behind them.

The Reverend Godley himself, shading his eyes from the low sun, stepped to the barn door when bis Black Prince nickered.

Jess lit stiffly down and was standing at Lady’s head when the Reverend Marcus Augustus reached them.

“Good evening, Marcus,” said Jess. “Thee run short of something over at thy place?”

“Welcome home,” said the Reverend Godley, never flinching. “I was hunting, with Enoch’s help, a bolt to fit my seeder,” he told Jess, but he never took his eyes off Lady.

He was a big man, fat but not pursy, with a full red face preaching had kept supple and limber. A variety of feelings, mostly painful, flickered across i t now as he gazed at Jess’s mare.

He opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, but all he managed to say was, “ Where’d you come across that animal, Friend Birdwell?”

“Kentucky,” Jess said shortly.

“I’m a Kentuckian myself.” The’Reverend Godley marveled that the state that had fathered him could have produced such horseflesh.

“You trade Red Rover for this?” he asked.

Jess rubbed his hand along Lady’s neck. “The mare’s name is Lady,” he said.

“Lady!” The preacher gulped, then threw back his big head and disturbed the evening air with laughter.

“ Friend,” Jess said, watching the big bulk heave, “thy risibilities are mighty near the surface this evening.”

The Reverend Godley wiped the tears from his face and ventured another look. “It’s just the cleavage,” he said. “The rift between the name and looks.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Jess told him, “but Lady is the name.”

The preacher stepped off a pace or two as if to try the advantage of a new perspective on the mare’s appearance, clapped a handful of Sen-sen into his mouth, and chewed reflectively.

“I figure it this way,” he told Jess. “You bought that animal Red Rover. Flashy as sin and twice as unreliable. First little brush you have with me and my cob, Red Rover curdles on you — goes sourer than a crock of cream in a June storm. What’s the natural thing to do?”

The Reverend Godley gave his talk a pulpit pause and rested his big thumbs in his curving watch chain.

“The natural thing to do? Why, just what you done. Give speed the go-by. Say farewell to looks. Get yourself a beast sound in wind and limb and at home behind a plow. Friend,” he commended Jess, “you done the right thing, though I’m free to admit I never laid eyes before on a beast of such dimensions.

“Have some Sen-sen?” he asked amiably. “Does wonders for the breath.” Jess shook his head.

“Well,” he continued, “I want you to know — Sunday mornings on the way to church, when I pass you, there’s nothing personal in it. T hat morning when I went round you and Red Rover, I somehow got the idea you’s taking it personal. Speed’s an eternal verity, friend, an eternal verity. Nothing personal. Rain falls. The stars shine. The grass withereth. The race is to the swift. A fast horse passes a slow one. An eternal verity, Friend Birdwell. You’re no preacher, but your wife is. She understands these things. Nothing personal. Like gravitation, like life, like death. A law of God. Nothing personal.

“The good woman will be hallooing for me,” he said, gazing up the pike toward his own farm a quarter of a mile away. He took another look at Jess’s new mare.

“Name’s Lady,” he said, as if reminding himself. “Much obliged for the bolt, Friend Birdwell. Me and my cob’ll see you Sunday.”

2

ENOCH stepped out from the born door as the Reverend Godley turned down the driveway.

“Figure I heard my sermon for the week,” he said.

“He’s got an endurin’ flock,” Jess told his hired man.

“Cob?” Enoch asked. “What’s he mean always calling that animal of his a cob? He ignorant?”

“Not ignorant — smooth,” Jess said. “Cob’s just his way of saying Black Prince’s no ordinary beast without coming straight out with so undraped a word as stallion.”

The two men turned with one accord from Godley’s cob to Jess’s Lady. Enoch’s green eyes flickered knowingly; his long freckled hand touched Lady’s muscled shoulder lightly, ran down the powerful legs, explored the deep chest.

“There’s more here, Mr. Birdwell, than meets the eye?”

Jess nodded.

“As far as looks goes,” Enoch said, “the Reverend called the turn.”

“As far as looks goes,” Jess agreed.

“She part Morgan?”

“Half,” Jess said proudly.

Enoch swallowed. “How’d you swing it?”

“Providence,” Jess said. “Pure Providence. Widow woman wanted a pretty horse and one that could be passed.”

“Red Rover,” Enoch agreed and added softly, “The Reverend was took in.”

“He’s a smart man,” said Jess. “We’d best not bank on it. But by sugar, Enoch, I tell thee I was getting tired of taking Eliza down the pike to Meeting every First Day like a tail to Godley’s comet. Have him start late, go round me, then slow down so’s we’d eat dust. Riled me so I was arriving at Meeting in no fit state to worship.”

“You give her a tryout — coming home?” Enoch asked guardedly.

“I did, Enoch,” Jess said solemnly. “This horse, this Morgan mare named Lady, got the heart of a lion and the wings of a bird. Nothing without pinfeathers is going to pass her.”

“It’s like Mr. Emerson says,” said Enoch earnestly.

Jess nodded. “Compensation,” he agreed. “A clear case of it and her pure due considering the looks she’s got.”

“You figure on this Sunday?” Enoch asked.

“Well,” Jess said, “I plan to figure on nothing. Thee heard the Reverend Marcus Augustus. A fast horse goes round a slow one. Eternal law. If Black Prince tries to pass us First Day — and don’t — it’s just a law, just something eternal. And mighty pretty, Enoch, like the stars.”

“A pity,” Enoch said reflecting, “the Reverend’s young’uns all so piddling and yours such busters. It’ll tell on your mare.”

“A pity,” Jess acquiesced, “but there it is. Eliza’d never agree to leave the children home from Meeting.”

Enoch ruminated, his fingers busy with Lady’s harness. “What’ll your wife say to this mare? Been a considerable amount of trading lately.”

“Say?” said Jess. “Thee heard her. ‘Exchange Red Rover for a horse not racy-looking.’ This mare racy-looking?”

“You have to look twice to see it,” Enoch admitted.

“Eliza don’t look twice at a horse. I’ll just lead Lady up now for Eliza to sec. She don’t hold with coming down to the barn white men’s about.”

Jess took Lady from the shafts and led her between the rows of currant bushes up to the house. Dusk was come now, lamps were lit. Inside, Eliza and the children were waiting for their greeting until the men had had their talk.

“Lady,” Jess said fondly, “I want thee to see thy mistress,”

3

THE rest of the week went by, mild and very fair, one of those spells in autumn when time seems to stand still. Clear days with a wind which would die down by afternoon. The faraway Sandusky ridges seemed to have moved up to the orchard’s edge. The purple ironweed, the farewell summer, the goldenrod, stood untrembling beneath an unclouded sky. Onto the corn standing shocked in the fields, gold light softer than arrows, but as pointed, fell, A single crow at dusk would drop in a slow arc against the distant wood to show that not all had died. Indian summer can be a time of great content.

First Day turned up pretty. Just before the start for Meeting, Jess discovered a hub cap missing off the surrey.

“Lost?” asked Eliza.

“I wouldn’t say lost,” Jess told her. “Missing.”

Odd thing, a pity to be sure, but there it was. Nothing for it but for him and Eliza to ride to Meeting in the cut-down buggy and leave the children behind. Great pity, but there it was.

Eliza stood in the yard in her First Day silk. “Jess,” she said in a balky voice, “this isn’t my idea of what’s seemly. A preacher going to Meeting in a cut-down rig like this. Looks more like heading for the trotting races at the county fair than preaching.”

Jess said, “Thee surprises me, Eliza. Thee was used to put duty before appearance. Friend Fox was content to tramp the roads to reach his people. Thee asks for thy surrey, fresh blacking on the dashboard and a new whip in the socket.”

He turned away sadly. “The Lord’s people are everywhere grown more worldly,” he said, looking dismally at the ground.

It didn’t set good with Jess, pushing Eliza against her will that way — and he wasn’t any too sure it was going to work. But the name Fox got her. When she was a girl she’d set out to bring the Word to people, the way Fox had done, and he’d have gone, she knew, to Meeting in a barrow, if need be.

So that’s the way they started out, and in spite of the rig, Eliza was lighthearted and holy-feeling. When they pulled out on the pike, she was pleased to note the mare’s gait was better than her looks. Lady picked up her feet like she knew what to do with them.

“Thee’s got a good-pulling mare, Jess,” she said kindly.

“She’ll get us there, I don’t misdoubt,” Jess said.

They’d rounded the first curve below the clump of maples that gave the Maple Grove Nursery its name when the Reverend Godley bore down upon them. Neither bothered to look back; both knew the heavy, steady beat of Black Prince’s hoofs.

Eliza settled herself in the cut-down rig, her Bible held comfortably in her lap. “It taxes the imagination,” she said, “how a man church-bound can have his mind so set on besting another. Don’t thee think so, Jess?”

“It don’t tax mine,” Jess said, thinking honesty might be the only virtue he’d get credit for that day.

Eliza was surprised not to see Black Prince pulling abreast them. It was here on the long stretch of level road that Black Prince usually showed them his heels.

“Thee’d best pull over, Jess,” she said.

“I got no call to pull out in the ditch,” Jess said. “The law allows me half the road,”

4

THE mare hadn’t made any fuss about it—no head-shaking, no fancy footwork — but she’d settled down in her harness, she was traveling. It was plain to Eliza they were eating up the road.

“Don’t thee think we’d better pull up, Jess?” Eliza said it easy, so as not to stir up the contrary streak that wasn’t buried very deep in her husband.

“By sugar,” Jess said, “I don’t see why.”

As soon as Eliza heard that “ by sugar” spoken as bold-faced as if it were a weekday, she knew it was too late for soft words. “By sugar,” Jess said again, “I don’t see why. The Reverend Godley’s got half the road and I ain’t urging my mare.”

It depended on what you called urging. He hadn’t taken to lambasting Lady with his hat yet, the way he had Red Rover, but he was sitting on the edge of the seat — and sitting mighty light, it was plain to see —driving the mare with an easy rein and talking to her like a weanling.

“Thee’s a fine mare. Thee’s a tryer. Thee’s a credit to thy dam. Never have to think twice about thy looks again.”

Maybe, strictly speaking, that was just encouraging, not urging, but Eliza wasn’t in a hairsplitting mood.

She looked back at the Reverend Marcus Augustus, and no two ways about it: he was urging Black Prince. The Reverend Godley’s cob wasn’t a length behind them and the Reverend himself was half standing, slapping the reins across Black Prince’s rump and exhorting him like a sinner newly come to the mourners’ bench.

This was a pass to which Eliza hadn’t thought to come twrice in a lifetime — twice in a lifetime to be heading for Meeting like a county fair racer in a checkered shirt.

“Nothing lacking nowr,” she thought bitterly, “but for bets to be laid on us.”

That wasn’t lacking either, if Eliza had only known it. They’d come in view of the Bethel Church now, and more than one of Godley’s flock had got so carried away by the race as to try for odds on their own preacher. It didn’t seem loyal not to back up their Kentucky brother with hard cash. Two to one the odds were — with no takers.

The Bethel Church sat atop a long, low rise, not much to the eye — but it told on a light mare pulling against a heavy stallion, and it was here Black Prince began to close in; before the rise was half covered, the stallion’s nose was pressing toward the buggy’s back near wheel.

Jess had given up encouraging. He was urging now. Eliza lifted the hat off his head. Come what might, there wasn’t going to be any more hatwhacking if she could help it— but Jess was beyond knowing whether his head was bare or covered. He was pulling with his mare now, sweating with her, sucking the air into scalding lungs with her. Lady had slowed on the rise — she’d have been dead if she hadn’t — but she was still a-going, still trying hard. Only the Quaker blood in Jess’s veins kept him from shouting with pride at his mare’s performance.

The Reverend Godley didn’t have Quaker blood in his veins. What he had was Kentucky horse-racing blood, and when Black Prince got his nose opposite Lady’s rump Godley’s racing blood got the best of him. He began to talk to his cob in a voice that got its volume from camp-meeting practice — and its vocabulary, too, as a matter of fact — but he was using it in a fashion his camp-meeting congregations had never heard.

They were almost opposite the Bethel Church now; Black Prince had nosed up an inch or two more on Lady and the Reverend Godley was still strongly exhorting — getting mighty personal, for a man of his convictions.

But Lady was a stayer and so was Jess. And Eliza, too, for that matter. Jess spared her a glance out of the comer of his eye to see how she was faring. She was faring mighty well — sitting bolt upright, her Bible tightly clasped, and clucking to the mare. Jess couldn’t credit what he heard. But there was no doubt about it — Eliza was counseling Lady. “Thee keep a-going, Lady,” she called. Eliza hadn’t camp-meeting experience, but she had a good clear pulpit voice and Lady heard her.

She kept a-going. She did better. She unloosed a spurt of speed Jess hadn’t known was in her. Lady was used to being held back, not yelled at in a brush. Yelling got her dander up. She stretched out her long neck, lengthened her powerful stride, and pulled away from Black Prince just as they reached the Bethel Church grounds.

Jess thought the race was won and over, that from here on the pace to Meeting could be more suitable to First Day travel. But the Reverend Godley had no mind to stop at so critical a juncture. He’d wrestled with sinners too long to give up at the first setback. He figured the mare was weakening. He figured that with a strong stayer like his Black Prince he’d settle the matter easy in the half mile that lay between the Bethel Church and the Quaker Meetinghouse at Rush Branch. He kept a-coming.

But one thing he didn’t figure—that was that the slope from Bethel to Rush Branch was against him. Lady had a downhill grade now. It was all she needed. She didn’t pull away from Black Prince in any whirlwind style, but stride by stride she pulled away.

It was a great pity Jess’s joy in that brush had to be marred. He’d eaten humble pie some time now, and he was pleasured through and through to be doing the dishing up himself. And he was pleasured for the mare’s sake.

5

BUT neither winning nor his mare’s pleasure was first with Jess. Eliza was. There she sat, white and suffering, holding her Bible like it was the Rock of Ages from which she’d come mighty near to clean slipping off. Jess knew Eliza had a forgiving heart when it came to others — but whether she could forgive herself for getting heated over a horse race the way she’d done, he couldn’t say.

And the worst for Eliza was yet to come. Jess saw that clear enough. When Lady and Black Prince had pounded past Godlcy’s church, a number of the Bethel brethren, who had arrived early and were still in their rigs, set out behind the Reverend Marcus Augustus to be in at the finish. And they were going to be. Their brother was losing, but they were for him still, close behind and encouraging him in a wholehearted way. The whole caboodle was going to sweep behind Jess and Eliza into the Quaker churchyard. They wouldn’t linger, but Jess feared they’d turn around there before heading back again. And that’s the way it was.

Lady was three lengths ahead of Black Prince when they reached the Rush Branch Meetinghouse. Jess eased her for the turn, made it on two wheels, and drew in close to the church. TheBethelites swooped in behind him and on out — plainly beat but not subdued. The Reverend Marcus Augustus was the only man among them without a word to say. He was as silent as a tombstone and considerably grimmer. Even his fancy vest looked to have faded.

The Quakers waiting in the yard for Meeting to begin were quiet, too. Jess couldn’t tell from their faces what they were feeling; but there was no use thinking that they considered what they’d just witnessed an edifying sight. Not for a weekday even, that mess of rigs hitting it down the pike with all that hullabaloo — let alone to First Day and their preacher up front, leading it.

Jess asked a boy to look after Lady. He was so taken up with Eliza he no more than laid a fond hand on Lady’s hot flank in passing. He helped Eliza light down, and set his hat on his head when she handed it to him. Eliza looked mighty peaked and withdrawn, like a woman communing with the Lord.

She bowed to her congregation and they bowed back and she led them out of the sunshine into the Meetinghouse with no word being spoken on eit her side. She walked to t he preacher’s bench, laid her Bible quietly down, and untied her bonnet strings.

Jess sat rigid in his seat among the men. Jess was a birthright Quaker — and his father and grandfathers before him — and he’d known Quakers to be read out of Meeting for less.

Eliza laid her little plump hands on her Bible and bowed her head in silent prayer. Jess didn’t know how long it lasted — sometimes it seemed stretching out into eternity, but Quakers were used to silent worship and he was the only one who seemed restive. About the time the ice round Jess’s heart was hardening past his enduring, Eliza’s sweet, cool, carrying voice said, “If the spirit leads any of thee to speak, will thee speak now?”

Then Eliza lowered her head again — but Jess peered round the Meetinghouse. He thought he saw a contented look on most of the faces — nothing that went so far as to warm into a smile, but a look that said they were satisfied the way the Lord had handled t hings. And the spirit didn’t mov e any member of the congregation to speak that day except for the prayers of two elderly Friends in closing.

6

THE ride home was mighty quiet. They drove past the Bethel Church, where the sermon had been short — for all the hitching racks were empty. Lady carried them along proud and untired. Enoch and the children met them down the pike a ways from home and Jess nodded the good news to Enoch — but he couldn’t glory in it the way he’d like because of Eliza.

Eliza was kind, but silent. Very silent. She spoke when spoken to, did her whole duty by the children and Jess, but in all the ways that made Eliza most herself, she was absent and withdrawn.

Toward evening Jess felt a little dauncy — a pain beneath the ribs, heart, or stomach, he couldn’t say which. He thought he’d brew himself a cup of sassafras tea, take it to bed and drink it there, and maybe find a little ease.

It was past nightfall when Jess entered his and Eliza’s chamber, but there was a full moon and by its light he saw Eliza sitting at the east window in her white nightdress, plaiting her black hair.

“Jess,”asked Eliza, noting the cup he carried, “has thee been taken ill?”

“No,” Jess said, “no,” his pain easing off of itself when he heard by the tones of Eliza’s voice that she was restored to him — forgiv ing and gentle, letting bygones be bygones.

“Eliza,” he asked, “wouldn’t thee like a nice hot cup of sassafras tea?”

“Why, yes, Jess,” Eliza said. “That’d be real refreshing.”

Jess carried Eliza her cup of tea walking down a path of roses the moon had lit up in the ingrain carpet.

He stood, while she drank it, with his hand on her chair, gazing out the window; the whole upeurve and embowered sweep of the earth soaked in moonlight — hill and wood lot, orchard and silent river. And beneath that sheen his own rooftree, and all beneath it, peaceful and at rest. Lady in her stall, Enoch reading Emerson, the children long abed.

“‘Sweet day,’” he said, “‘so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky.’”

And though he felt so pensive and reposeful, still the bridge of his big nose wrinkled up, his ribs shook with laughter.

Eliza felt the movement of his laughing in her chair. “What is it, Jess?” she asked.

Jess stopped laughing, but said nothing. He figured Eliza had gone about as far in one day as a woman could in enlarging her appreciation of horseflesh; still he couldn’t help smiling when he thought of the sermon that might have been preached that morning in the Bethel Church upon the eternal verities.