Plains Song by Wright Morris Page A

and a wagon piled with what they would need to begin housekeeping, although they had no house. A girl with coal-black hair and a hillbilly manner (the pitch of her voice deafened Cora), she cast her eyes about nervously as she talked; the front of her soiled blouse lacked buttons. Cora thought her wild and unkempt in appearance, her black hair disheveled as an unruly child’s. She did not wear bloomers. Most ofwhat little Cora had heard of hill people seemed confirmed.
    Belle was not afraid of work, however, and couldn’t seem to get enough of child caring and tending. She spent most of her day in Cora’s dining room or kitchen, fondling and fussing with Beulah Madge. Orion explained her own mother was dead, and she had been the one to tend and raise six smaller children. She liked all babies, but she loved Beulah Madge. It was a great help to Cora to be free of child tending while there was so much to be done elsewhere. Emerson said, surprising her, that now she had an old one and a young one. With his own plowing to do, he was no help to Orion, who had to find a hired hand to help with the house building. One of them Scandahoovians, as Emerson called him, he came to and from Cora’s table without a word. Of what extraction he was, if he had people somewhere, if he intended to settle or move on westward, neither Orion nor Cora heard him say, although he would nod his head in answer to questions. He took pains to empty and rinse his own wash pan, but a towel was soaked wet once he had wiped his hands, face, and huge ears. He started his hammering and sawing when there was light enough to see, and would work in the darkening twilight after supper. It was the same as having two men working different shifts. Of course, Orion, just as Emerson had feared, had to have himself a house with a basement, but as soon as the first floor was nailed down the hired hand made himself at home in it. It distressed Cora to see the way he carried nails in hismouth. A man who did that most of his life might find he had lost the power to speak his own language, whatever it was. What Orion paid him he put into his pocket and had no occasion or opportunity to spend. Just when Cora had grown accustomed to his presence at the table, he was gone, and she missed him, much as it had distressed her to see the sawdust at the roots of his hair when he bowed for grace.
    With a place of her own, Belle Rooney still spent most of her day with Cora and Madge. She did what Cora told her, or she cunningly managed not to do it, as a clever child might. Brown sugar disappeared from the crock in the cupboard, and honey from the comb stored in the storm cave. Belle had cravings. “I just don’t know what I’d do without sweeteners,” she said, as if she ever did. She helped herself to change from the sugar bowl the way a child would take cookies from a jar in the pantry. With it she bought ribbons, pins, and cheap jewelry to make herself pretty. Cora was amazed. She could not understand this need for self-display. Nor when new buttons were attached to her blouse did Belle manage to keep them buttoned.
    â€œNow look here,” Cora would say, and button her up, but it left no impression. It vexed Cora, but did not make her angry. She might as well try to take a stitch in the weather. After all, there was no one to see her but Cora, Orion, and the grubbing Madge. Emerson seemed unaware that she was there. He had not been consulted in the matter of their marriage, and it was his way of ignoring that it had happened. A woman like Cora would have taken offense, but Belle was likea wild creature among those she liked, both friendly and indifferent to those who didn’t like her. Not many, though, were indifferent; the men at the Sunday service followed her with their eyes.
    Just as Emerson had warned them, a house with a basement only halfway beneath it looked strange. One had to go up a flight of four steps to the porch, which few women