The seagoing farm's harvest goes on into the month when the frost flowers dust all the pasture over just before the real frost comes.
Only the harvest quickens up, and it comes now, not only from the sea and land, but from a new direction, the air. The law lifts from the seventy-seven varieties of ducks. Hardy dinners—and it takes a hardy man like stout Uncle Timothy to stand up under the fishiness of such—whistle up the bay on coots. They honk half a mile up in ring-necked geese coming back fat from Labrador and wild rice. They dusk the twilight in dusky black duck. Peter even shoots a whistler in the well-pond among the outraged frogs that thought love and war were over.
The air drops stews and potpies all over the water and land as Father stands up and gives them both barrels. Uncle Timothy lets go with his eight-gauge, Peter gives them the works with his sixteen-gauge, Andrew picks them off with his twenty-two, and James snatches it from him and pinks them, and out on the water the ocean blossoms with yellow thunder, and Uncle Cephus brings down a fourteen-pound goose. The old captain in the family signals to Peter with his red-and-white flag to come out and join him at his famous goose stew with cod-lead dumplings made out of almost dry dough, exploding into miracles in the hot pottage.
And when Father isn't looking, Peter, full of cod-lead dumplings and vast valor, borrows his twelve-gauge Lefever and knocks over a black duck, and knocks himself over, tail over teakettle as Uncle Timothy puts it, on the first barrel and never gets the chance to shoot the second.
Smack in the middle of chevrons of wild birds going over, school starts up once more. Peter goes off the bay and up the wood-road, squeaking proudly in the unaccustomed shoes he has earned our of huckleberries, and blisters his heels badly in the cause of culture. And his face at night matches his heels. For when Peter goes to get Lucy Brown's books to carry them home for her, he finds they are under the arm of black Ben Boody, and Lucy's arm is through Ben's arm, and her dancing eyes see nobody in the world but the black boy who looks for all the world, to Peter's way of thinking, like a codfish, and not a very good-looking codfish even.
Peter legs it slowly a mile and a half behind his brothers and sisters. James twits him on his lost love, and he heaves a stone at James. This settles it. He swears off all womankind for good. He brings down a poor hungry song sparrow with his sling, and his black mood and blacker deed hush the pinewoods with horror around him.
That night Peter has to dig three rows of early potatoes and get them into the cellar. He steals away from supper and reads the book to match his bitterness, The Ms Found in a Bottle, by the light of a guttering candle with a sad fall wind crying lonesomely around the eaves of his room. Andrew asks him to dowse the light so he can sleep, but Peter refuses to. Andrew has to bury his head under the quilts. Late in the night, in a crucial part of the story, Peter drops a drop of hot candle fat on Andrew's car. Andrew comes awake with a roar and slaps him and slaps out his taper.
Peter remembers the story of Cupid and Psyche and how Psyche dropped the blazing oil on the young God of Love, and how the God of Love sighed deeply and flew out of the room forever. Only Peter must admit Andrew doesn't look very much like Cupid, and doesn't fly away. He flies at Peter and wakes James up. Then the two of them lie on Peter, keep him down on the bed, and keep him from lighting his candle again. Everything Peter touches turns into bitterness.
Next morning, who should blow in on the family but the cheerful aunt, Hattie. She, like several of Peter's aunts, lacks the balance wheel of an uncle. Peter isn't surprised in the case of Aunt Hattie. No man could last more than a few months through such optimism. Aunt Harriet's spouse was lost at sea in the Great Blow of 1898. Peter has the feeling that it wasn't a great blow at all. Hattie's man probably spent all his nights out on deck or even our on the bowsprit of his schooner waiting for something in the way of a blow to come along, big or little.
Aunt Hat says it was. God's will. So it was when Peter stuck a tine of the dung fork into his foot digging for angleworms in the dark where James had dug before him and had left the dung fork there and forgotten to tell Peter about it. She also said it would be God's will if Peter got a case of lockjaw out of the mishap. It was God's will, too, when Uncle Timothy broke his log on the ice cake running wild at Sam Linscott's ice house two years ago. The one thing Uncle Timothy begged them to do for him, so his leg would knit and be some use to him again, was to get Aunt Harriet out of the house before he had to use poison on her.
Sure enough. Aunt Hattie is her cheerful old self right at the start. She is quite calm and sings as she puts the lard on Mother's arm where she has scalded it with fat that splashed up from the skillet when she was frying a batch of donuts for Aunt Hattie. In spite of burns, blows, stabbings, and broken limbs, Hat always looks on the cheerful side of things.
Peter has to keep an eye on his hazelnuts in the lower swamp. The red squirrels are keeping an eye on them also. But Uncle Cephus feels the first frost in his bones and cells Peter so, and Peter gets up under the morning Star, lakes the lantern and goes through the silver powder of the first white frost to his trees. He finds the burrs sprung open and the twin nuts ready to pop out at dawn, and he pops them all into his pockets. Uncle Cephus is wiser than the squirrels at weather.
But the squirrels get most of the beechnuts in the upper pasture. Peter goes up there a few dawns later, with his feet white with frost, and finds only the hairy open burrs. And all the farm's squirrels set up a great laughter at Peter as he stands there shivering in the thin dawn's light. Tit for tat. and even-Stephen! Peter wishes he had his twenty-two along to add to his store of pelts.
When he comes from the spring with the family's drinking water in his pails—so full that he has to put two white birch chips in them to keep them from slopping over—Peter takes off his shoes, his feet are so cold with the frosty morning. He finds a place in the pasture where a heifer has spent the night and just risen, and he warms his feet with her warmth.
In spite of the powder of the early frosts, some huckleberries are still hanging on the bushes, and they are much sweeter for the touch of the hoar frost. Peter knows of a ledge overhanging the sea, covered with huckleberry bushes. He takes Ann and Molly there and turns them loose in the makings of good huckleberry pies. He lets them gather the berries that were his. Keeping an eye on them to be sure they don't eat too many for their own good and so don't get enough for three pics. Peter busies himself at more exciting work. With a fishline from his pocket he lands a mess of purple-finned dinners for a chowder by his mother. The fish bite so well, he soon has a long string of them hung on a huckleberry bush beside the working girls.
As the three farm children concentrate on their coming dinner, a tall buck deer clears the three of them and the huckleberries in a sudden amazing are across the turquoise September sky. This is such a picture as only a seagoing farm can supply: a rapt boy taking thorny fish from the sea. girls with hair like upset honey, heaping pails from bushes that arch over the nibbling fish, and going over them all, a white-bottomed deer, with horns like the ghost of a dead spruce tree on him, like a slim forest god.
And now the stubble in the mown hayfield glitters with new tar. The tar kettles are boiling over hot and fragrant in the sun. Uncle Cephus and Father and Uncle Timothy are running the gray seines through the pitchy liquid and spreading them out on the Ileitis to harden black in the autumn air. The black seines run across the morning and the whole world. The aftermath of red clover is flattened by the nets, but the last single, wistful frostflowers are standing slender up through the meshes.
There is the smell of death on the morning, but there is the strong smell of life, too, for the seines mean smelts are running in the tides of another year, and a seashore family has life and happiness for their taking in the tides. So the chain of life on a seaside farm is never quite broken by death and the fall of the leaf. The golden leaves of maple trees on the water mean silver fish swarming beneath the water. The ends of some things spell the beginning of others. And Peter is sad to see the leaves fall, but is glad to know that the smelts are luck again on his shore.
The three big men smell to heaven of the fragrance of fall fishing. They have tar on their cheeks and tar on their trousers. Peter himself is almost pure tar as he helps pull out the long sprawls of the seines Aunt Hattie will have lots of chances to be cheerful for Peter when his mother will have to use sandpaper on his chin and forehead to get these stains off the boy against the schoolday tomorrow. But what use will his clean face be when Lucy's eyes are another way?
Yet once again work, the healer of all the hurts of love, has Peter in its arms. Peter and his brothers hurry home from school every crisp September night to do what boys had rather do than cat—sit up through the night in a boat on the water.
After supper, Father calls the roll: Uncle Cephus, Uncle Timothy, Peter, Andrew. James, and John. They all get into their long bonis, up to their middles in rubber. They fill the lanterns with oil. Uncle Timothy Mulls his pants with cut plug. Uncle Cephus stows aboard his pipe tobacco. Father, when Mother is looking the other way. slides a bottle of bourdon into his coat pocket against the fall of the frost. Father leads the way. They file down to the work that is really play through the rustling grass of the meadow. Their lanterns make tall gods of them, even the boys, and dark forms go across the stirs of the sky headed towards the bay. They swing the lanterns and have nothing to say, sunk in the silence, and the warmth of their clothes. They file across the night and the stars to the fishing that flourishes in darkness.
Down at the cove the silence is shattered. There is a fine lot of shouting of orders and loud bailings of dories and loading in of seines by rhythmed arms and legs. The tide is nearly down. and all the loaded dories have to be launched through the mud. Uncle Timothy stumbles upon some brand-new oaths the boys have not heard before as he barks his shins on a dory they have pushed up beside his in the dark. The seine dories are afloat at last, down to their gunwales with black nets, and they are made fast to the three empty dories. All hands push off, manning the empties. The men let the boys do the rowing for once, and they sit aft and smoke or chew or wet the dry throat with bourbon.
The dories head up to the bay northwards, to the low-tide channels of Mill Cove. The lanterns are doubled in dark water that is full of mysterious sounds. The four boys let no barnacles grow on their bottoms, for other lanterns are bobbing on the bay, and they want to beat their rivals to the best berths in the two channels to the north there, under the full Dipper, Uncle Cephus pushes against Peter as he pulls, and Father and Uncle Timothy do the same with the boys in their boats.
The family beat the procession of lanterns to the double stakes set in the mud for the first-comers. Father and Uncle Cephus and Uncle Timothy leap out into the water and wade to the loaded dories, make the seines fast to the stakes, give the command to the boys, and each boy starts rowing straight out—Peter and Andrew, and James and John pulling double. The men stand in the sterns and pay out the nets, cork line in right hand, lead line in the left. flinging their arms out into the night.
They are using the upper stakes, and trying their luck on the ebb. Behind them in the dark water the ebbing curtent pushes the seines southward in long bows. The boys put all they have into the ash, bending over double, and their seats burn under them. But the three long loops of nets are out at last, and the boys are at the other side of the channel. All they have to do now is row steadily and quietly, so as not to frighten the down-coming smelts with their oars, and keep the loops from going out towards the sea and hold them across the channel. The men spell the boys and show them how quiet rowing can be.
The large September stars burn silently overhead. The only sound is that of the living water moving with the mysterious power of the tide. It is so still a dog barking miles away on the mainland seems to hurt the whole night. An owl hoots on an island somewhere. but is abashed by all the stillness and falls quiet. The water around the men and boys suddenly comes to amazing murmurings. There are plenty of fish out here tonight, fish by millions.
They all wait for the word from Uncle Cephus. They leave the timing to him. Uncle Cephus ships his oars suddenly and stands up. That is the signal. The boys leap to the oars, swing the dories about and row for dear life above the stakes across the channel to their starting point, doubling the seines up behind them as they bend to the oars. They splash now all they can, urged on by strong words from Uncle Cephus and Uncle Timothy. All three great loops are drawn into smaller and smaller pockets. The dories are made fast to the stakes. All the men and boys pull the pockets in and in. bringing the leadline, which is at the bottom of the nets, faster than the curkline, to keep what fish they may have from going our under. There are only the last pockets. They have them aboard. They come too easily, filled with nothing Skunked. Only a few handfuls of smelts and a lot of irate crabs and spiny, growling sculpins shine up at them in the lanterns' light.
“Oh well, this is a flood night,” declares Father. And Cephus nods. They all sit quiet for a bit and wait for the change of the tide. They smoke and chew and drink again. Cephus knows when the tide turns without touching so much as a little linger to the water. He gives the quiet word now. The boys start rowing, the seines go overboard again from the spreading hands of the standing men. Once at the opposite side, with all the nets out full length, they row to the southward now and lean against the slow push of the flooding tide. Once again Uncle Cephus gives the signal, and they cross the channel now below the stakes. They shout and splash the water all they can all the way. The surprised bay echoes with the loud boys.
This time the last pockets are vast burdens to bring aboard. All hands have to give a hand to each one. And when the pocket is dumped into the dories, the boats are snowed over with flakes of flying silver, and the live fish Hood the boat's bottom. In the light of the lanterns loom hundreds on hundreds of pounds of smelts, bright eyes burning with death, small mouths choking on the empty air. Silver smelts, capelins like splinters of a winter moon, deepbellied sunfish, baby bluefish like flakes of the sky, green triangles of flounders. horned sculpins, emerald tomcods, and here and there the wild torments that are crazed eels. It is like looking into the nebulae in outer space. They reload the seine dories and row home.
At the wharf it is like a page out of the Arabian Nights. Peter's father and Uncle Cephus and Uncle Timothy stand up like tall jinns and dip up dip nets of live silver and pour them out over the planks. The boys look alive, bend down, and sort out the big smelts from the little blue-fish and the butterfish. A late marsh hen flies over, startled into screams by the sight of so much food. The smelts are sorted at lust. The herring and unwanted bluefish and the rest are for the gardens and for the fields of hay and corn next summer—just as these salt-water farmers learned the value of sea fertilizer from the Indians generations ago. The smelts are for the Boston fish markets, and they mean many dollars towards a new mowing machine and new harnesses.
But the tenderest baby bluefish and the largest of the deep-bellied sunfish are for the frying pan Cephus thought to bring down to the shore. Uncle Timothy has a fierce fire of dry spruce going in two shakes of a lamb's tail and six flourishes of his jackknife. Uncle Cephus cuts up hunks of pork and greases his pan. The fish go in. They curl up double into splinters of delight. Uncle Cephus tosses fried flakes of moonlight into boys' laps left and right. The pork has seasoned the fish. For once the boys do not have to eat anything else, bread or johnnycake, with their fish. They don't have to keep count. They stow them in as only hungry boys who have been out half the night on salt water can stow them.
The men take a hand at the second or third frying pan, They and the boys eat like Indians, using both hands, blowing out backbones and ribs, eating the fish flame-hot, swallowing guts and heads and fins. The eat far into the night, till they are able to eat no more. Then they sit back on their haunches and dream.
The big September stars slide over. Uncle Timothy keeps up his fire, and the spruce brush sends up earth-stars to mingle with the sky's. Uncle Cephus puffs on his pipe. Uncle Timothy shoots a jet of tobacco juice every so often into the embers. Father uncorks the bourbon and passes it round. And four boys full of tender young fish sit warm on their heels and think as little Indian boys did, under these same stars, on this same cove, with these same fish inside them more than a thousand or so years ago.