Thomas Tryon - Harvest Home

Who was she? Who was she meant to be?

I had thought at first it must be the Corn Maiden. But, observing her, I realized she had come in a form different from what I expected, something other than what I had seen in the quilt. I sensed it was not she but someone else, someone whose identity I was supposed to guess. The sphinx. In her very being lay the conundrum. Tell me who I am, she seemed to say. She remained motionless for a period, as if giving me time to make my guess; then she lifted her hands outward from her sides, and they met slowly over her head, raising the veil as the covered fingers touched above. I was both shocked and excited as I realized that under the veil she was completely naked, and I could see the gleam of her thighs, pale and marmoreal in the moonlight, with the dark, mysterious cleft between.

I thought she must remove the veil. I thought she must invite me, make some gesture, some signal that I was to come to her, to take the place of the other figure, but when the hem of the drapery had lifted almost to the waist, it immediately dropped again. I rose and took a step forward, revealing myself. I looked to the place where the man had been standing, but he had disappeared. Then the woman figure inclined her head beneath the veil, posed for an instant, turned, and stepped from the grass onto the strip of dark earth, into the shadows of the cornstalks, then into the corn itself.

She was gone.

I ran partway down the lawn, then stopped. I was not meant to follow. Something had been revealed to me, not only the woman’s charms, but also some deeper, metaphysical equation I could not solve. Watching the field, I heard the dry bone sound I had heard earlier, followed by a short flute passage, brief but effective, like the final coda in the Strauss Till Eulenspiegel . A beguiling strain, yet somehow mocking, as though the whole thing had been a game, some little divertissement for an autumn evening.

All was silence. I turned and went back up the lawn to the terrace. I found the peg for the cask, fitted it in, picked up the glasses, and carried them and the keg into the house. I rinsed out the glasses and set them in the rack. I let the cold water run on my hand; the flow had an incredible feeling to it. I turned off the tap and put the cask on the topmost shelf of one of the cupboards. I locked the kitchen door, switched off the lights, went through the hall, checked that the front door was locked, and went upstairs. I stopped and listened at Kate’s door, then opened it softly. She was asleep. I closed it again, and crossed the hall to our bedroom. The door was ajar. I went in to find Beth in the rocking chair by the window. Her hand was raised in what appeared to be a gesture, and at first I thought she was motioning to someone; then I saw she was only reaching for the tassel of the shade. She drew it down, and her hand dropped into her lap. She spoke softly, calling me darling, and rose to extinguish the only light, the small one on the bureau. She disrobed and got onto the bed, which she had turned down. She was waiting for me.

The moonlight streamed through the front windows, enough to undress by. I was careful with my clothes, folding them and placing them on the chair, my shoes beneath, and when I turned again Beth drew a little breath as I went to her, and I thought of a bride on her wedding night, waiting to submit to the demands of her spouse. But when I took her it was no virgin I took, but a woman, versed and capable, as accomplished a lover as any man could hope for. We were together as we had never been before, not even in the days of the Rue du Bac in Paris, a meeting of two people that was not only physical but spiritual as well, and if ever we knew one another, it was on that night when we had drunk from the Widow Fortune’s little wooden cask and the flutes had played.

Afterward, while Beth slept, I rose again and went into the bathroom. From the window over the radiator, I could look down onto the terrace, the lawn, the meadow, and the cornfield, all moon-flooded, and it seemed that I could see one of the figures standing there again, where it had stood before. Not the woman; the man-a dark shape, forming the figure of straw and corn, waiting. For what? I told myself that now I was really imagining, but I have since thought differently. Was it he, truly, the Harvest Lord?

I looked a moment longer, trying to make out the figure, and then it was gone. If it had returned at all. Or if it had ever been there. Getting back into bed, settling myself under the sheet, my head on the pillow, my arm around Beth’s shoulders, I pictured again the mysterious figure of the woman. Who was she? Or, rather, who was she meant to be? I recalled the Widow’s words about the riddle of the sphinx; now I had been provided with my own riddle to solve. I remember that the last thing I thought of were the old lady’s words: A man must learn to discover what is possible.

Then I fell into a dreamless sleep.

One afternoon the following week I could hear the church clock striking five as I cleaned my brushes and palette and put my paints away. Then I rode my bike into the village to send off to my New York gallery some Polaroid prints of the bridge painting. I went into the post office, where Myrtil Clapp, the postmistress’s assistant, sold me a stamp. Attaching it, I saw the postmistress herself, making tea from a singing kettle on a hot plate set on some file cabinets at the rear. Beyond, in the back room, I could see Constable Zalmon, feet propped up on his desk, smoking his corncob pipe and thumbing through a copy of Field and Stream .

Tamar Penrose glanced up from her tea things and gave me one of her smoky looks. I lifted a hand in a brief salute, dropped the envelope into the slot, and went out.

I checked my watch against the steeple clock, noting the spasmodic activity around the Common as I crossed it. Mrs. Green went into the library with an armload of books. Jim Minerva loaded groceries into the back seat of his Volkswagen and drove off, heading south along Main Street. A farm wagon creaked by, Will Jones seated in it with the reins drooping between his hands. He pulled up outside the Rocking Horse and went in. With tinkling bells, the sheep baaed and moved from my path as I headed for the church on the opposite side.

Some of the younger village girls were going up the steps, and through the open vestibule doors I could hear the soft lilt of organ music from inside. Coming up onto the sidewalk, I saw Mrs. Buxley hurrying from the beauty parlor; Margie Perkin had been at her hair. She dithered her fingers as she hastened to greet me.

“ Lovely day,” she said, as though she herself had fashioned it. And how was I, how were Beth and Kate, and how were my lovely paintings? Inside, choir practice began, and the bell-like sounds of the girls’ sopranos and altos floated out through the doors.

“ Lovely sound, isn’t it? Our young girls are rehearsing for Tithing Day. You’ll be coming, surely.”

I said I hadn’t heard about Tithing Day, and she explained that next Sunday would be a special service when the village offered their token corn tithes to the church. An impressive ceremony; we were certain to find it rewarding.

“See you in church.” She dithered her fingers again and went into the vestibule. Amys Penrose came along, pushing his broom at the edge of the roadway, stopping when he got abreast of me to touch a finger to his hat brim. I waved to the Widow, whose buggy went creaking by on the far side of the Common. I had not seen her to talk to since the “experience,” the weekend before, and I was anxious to hear what she would have to say about the epiphany of the Harvest Lord and the unknown lady. With rattling wheels and rusty springs, the mare clip-clopping along the dusty roadway, she, too, headed south. In a moment, Kate came riding her horse out of the north end of Main Street; she went flying onto the Common where the terrified sheep moved from her path in a huddled, woolly mass. I called to her not to disturb them; she waved and rode on.