Begins with low clouds, and it seems the clouds stretch off to forever. Grandma sees a winding sheet in her evening candle, and is troubled. The sea mourns the night through. The small boy is glad for the desk by the stove at school. He lies and sees pictures of Arthur an his knights in the coals when his father boils a pot of lobsters by night at the shore, and the clouds of sparks from the spruce are doubled by the dark water. It grows colder and colder. The ocean is troubled at the high skyline; far islands are uneasy and lift in mirages, leaving the sea an having only a stem to hold them to water. It comes off soft and rains. It comes off cold and freezes. But the pools the boy hoped to slide on have only air under them in the morning.
It grows dark at midday, a snowflake zigzags down, and another. The first snow flurry ices the grass. But earth is blown bare by an hour of wind. The man goes with his axe to the spruce woods, he cuts brush, an he and the children bank the house with evergreen laces up to the clap- boards, as the Indians banked their houses before them. The girls gather hemlock cones to gild. The little dog sticks close to the kitchen stove. Grandpa keeps him company. The wind off the sea grieves at the house's eaves.
Sagittarius is the sign, the Bowman, and the long arrows of the south- bound geese go over. The old man sees them and is sad, remembering bygone springs and falls. The sign is the Centaur, the half-horse, half-man; and the coast man is like him and double: one foot on land, one in the sea. He brings home smelts in his cart, his corn in his clam rocker. He plows the fall fields, and he furrows the dark bay by boat. He milks the tame cow, but has his hand in wild mackerel. He pulls the rutabagas today, but pulls in green lobsters tomorrow. He is tiller but carpenter, too, an he keeps his boat's engine running. He is his busiest now under his Centaur sign. He takes in his traps for winter, hangs his nets up in the fishhouse, cuts the stovewood, breaks in the steers, hawks his clams an eggs in the village.
The day the small boy loves comes in raw. The pig is stuck in the pen, his thinning squeals go up to the welkin. Then he hangs pink as a cherub in the shed over a tub, free of his bristles. He is laid open like a canoe, his ribs braced apart with oak stretchers. There is hog's haslet for supper. Next day the centaur goes into the firs with his rifle along his thigh. The little boy is one pace in back, his twenty-two imitating his father's rifle. Deep in the firs is an orchard, where once a house stood, and they creep towards the gnarled and ancient trees. A white flag goes up, waves this way and that, but the rifle stabs fire, the flag falls an lies still. The boy runs and kneels, an he watches the light go out in wide eyes on the frozen ground. He is sad for a bit. But the buck is a four-pronger. The man carries the deer home over his broad shoulders. That night it is venison blanketed hot in singed bacon. The buck hangs by his heels in the shed, next to the pig, for the winter.
Cut off the ears, dig out the pig's eyes. Put ears and the pig's head into the iron kettle. Boil in salted water till the meat falls from the bone. Run the meat through the chopping tray. A sage and chopped raw onion. Add the stock to the meat, sprinkle in bay leaves and marjoram, set away in the low crock to cool. Slice, as you would cake, this jelly of the gods. This is the feast of hog's head cheese.
Father misses his annual tidbit, the pig's tail. He demands it at supper. No one knows a thing about it. But the hired man's moustache droops to his plate, his eyes droop, he says nothing. And a mile away a plump widow is sitting down to the roasted curl of a pig's extremity, polishing her knife on her napkin, with lovelight in her eyes.
The crows press their breastbones on the leafless boughs at night, but they flap off with ragged wings and gaunt crops to the ebb in the morning an look for mussels to carry to the pasture ledges and break open for breakfast. The bees sit comfortable in their dark houses with the light of summer warming them from their honeycombs. But the partridges run mad in the dark of the moon and fly blindly away to the four winds.
The little Molasses-Candy Girl comes to supper at the house of the little boy with curly white-pine shavings on his head. There is a sea-moss-farina pudding in her honor, and the girls of the house make her laugh with bright talk of dolls' dresses. Molasses-Candy is the center of the meal. But the little boy has lost his tongue, and he keeps his eyes on his pudding, so shy is he at having his wife-to-be for the first time at his table. The big boy talks for him, an his father gives the house a good name by helping the girl to a second plate of the pudding from the deep sea. Everybody is on his Sunday behavior. The hired man is all graces and shows off his best table manners, crooking his little finger out handsomely as he navigates his teacup to his moustache an back. He basks in the thought of how the next guest may be a widow about to become a wife and how he will shine before her. The little boy finds his lost tongue only when he is seeing the girl home under the low November stars. It is cold, but the boy comes home warm because he kissed the girl at her door.
The rabbits are turning white in the swamp where the bushes are duste each morning with hoarfrost. They run and leap with no fear of a yellow dog now. For he hangs to the house and hugs the fire. John Henry Woodchuck is beginning to get sleepy as the juicy grass roots wither. John Henry is digging his burrow deeper and deeper below the level of the frost. The sun is lower in the sky each day, and all good things must come to an end. John Henry knows it, and he blinks his drowsy eyes.
And the hired man comes reeling home on a bleak and overcast day. His moustache hangs at the ends like a flower after a frost, and in his woebegone eyes the sun has set for this year. He speaks to no soul in the house. He goes up to his chamber under the eaves, gets out his mouth-harp, and plays “Bingen on the Rhine” over and over late into the night. Grandpa knows, all the house knows, and all the house keeps quiet. It is the widow. Next morning Father brings home the melancholy news. The widow has sold out and gone to California to live with her brother. Widows, like all good things, come to an end.
A slim new moon, whetstoned by frost, hangs tangled in the thorns of the leafless briarbush. There is nothing young in the world now to wax as its horns waxߞnot a bud, not a nestling, not a snake or mole, not a love for a widow even. The moon wastes its silver on dead thorns. The lonely last wood- cock, with wide eyes full of fear of death at the nose of a dog, crouches his last northern night with the moon in the briar.
New hams go to the smokehouse, an the bacon strips are hung in the chimney. Nights are festooned with sausages, and sage is the seasoning of the month. The boy grows taut as a drum. The gulls have come inshore, and they cry always, lonesome and hungry. Slush ice is making at the bay's edge. The baby upsets his high chair.
The day of days comes, the reach boat is pulled out of the tide. The horses pant, and the white wonder comes up on its cradle. It is roofed in under the pines. The bees, deep in the hive, start their glassy wings going to keep their hearts alive. All the dories are over- turned under the trees. It spits snow from the north. It comes off a har freeze, the ponds in the swamp are solid. The small boy learns to skate, and he dusts all the snow off the ice with his breeches before he masters the secret. But the big boy grinds-bark backwards, showing off to his sisters. Next day the small boy falls only twice and learns how to stop when he wants to.
And the holy Thursday comes at last, and a whopping turkey, a dozen squash pies, two dozen mince, and a hundre tarts trembling at their open hearts with crab-apple jelly. It snows uncles an aunts. It rains cousins. There are hazel- nuts, apples red, green, and golden, beechnuts, and cranberry sauce molde into stars.
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
When the smoke clears away from the long table and the uncles are gone into the future, filled men, Grandpa looks at the turkey's naked breastbone. It is all white. The snow will lie deep this winter. That is best, for “open winters mean fat graveyards.” The snow will lie deep.
And in the morning, Grandma weeps, and Grandpa lies still in his bed. He will not eat that last ear of corn he saved, or wade the deep snow coming. The gulls mourn over the bay.
It is November, month of farewells. The men and boats go home.
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