October comes to the northern seagoing farm like a bonfire. The white fires of the deep frosts burn the earth and leave it scar and brown in the sun. But the fires of the turning leaves make red and golden flames of all the forests. And these colored fires burn all day long and shine far at sea. It is like walking through the Book of Revelation to go after the cows at evening time, and Peter holds his breath between tall, cool Haines, liven the cows come solemnly home, for they know they will soon go to the pasture no more. They sense the end of sweet grass, and they fall sad and walk slow. The bright cries of the silent, painted warriors of death warn them, as they used to warn the painted Indians of centuries ago, that death is in the air. The burning woods have all fallen as quiet as the grave. For the last nations of the birds have gathered in flocks and gone south, and the coast has no more song.
This is the final harvest month. Everyone makes haste to gather and house the last that the gardens and orchards yield. The sea takes a back seat to the land now. And sailors dig potatoes, not clams. Uncle Timothy leaves wakes Or warm potatoes behind him, not wakes of cool spray, and he uses his clam hoe for the apples in the earth. Peter and the other boys have hard work keeping their uncle in sight, he goes so fast and so fierce. They lug the potatoes in baskets they used for clams on the other side of summer. Vast squashes that no one knew were there till the frost limped their leaves now come out bright suddenly across the greenless hills and light up the afternoons. Pumpkins appear, now that their tents of pride have fallen around them. The whole farm is a new and larger one than Peter guessed, now that all the leaves are dying and the odor of death is over the year.
Peter is prisoned for hours in the dusky bin down-cellar, and potatoes come down to him like waves of a brown sea. He rolls them into the far corners of the bin, and his mouth tastes of good fall earth. Pumpkins come down at him like suns from the sky, and the light on their rinds lights up the cobwebs festooned between the rafters of the cellar ceiling. Spiders, enormous with their harvests of indolent fall flies, hang heavy, head down, from the beams.
The dish of the month is the granddaddy of all the raccoons, fattened on the fat of the garden and now paying back his debt surrounded with potatoes he did not eat. He is as fat as a crock of butter from the corn cars he has stolen from the family. Now the family grease their gullets against the cold mornings with their own goods secondhand. Peter catches the coon in his trap, at the upper end of the corn patch. He skins him and stretches his pelt on a wide board. Peter has a second barred tail to go on his Daniel Boone cap made from the brother of this very coon.
Mother dresses the raccoon, and he lies in the bake pan, legs up, a deep brown, with the largest potatoes of fall like nuggets of gold around him and onions between the potatoes. Mother has parboiled him with soda, to take some of the wild flavor out of his meat, and she has roasted him two hours in a hot oven. She drains off a pint of his fat, and with his dark juices makes a thick gravy and squeezes a lemon into it.
Uncle Timothy is very partial to roast raccoon, and his is the greasiest chin at the end of brown October's brownest and fattest feast. The boys and girls pipe up with old song:
Raccoon and possum jelly,
Et so much I bust my belly!
Uncle Cephus goes light on this strong meat of the earth. He can stand even a coot's wildness because that is a wildness of the sea, but this land raciness is a different matter. But Cephus stows away many potatoes that have absorbed the gentler aroma of the raccoon.
The sea is like crushed sapphires in the clear sunlight, but it begins to grow uneasy on its far horizon on the cold mornings, and islands lift from it and grow only by a stem in the mirages of the end of a coast year.
From the potatoes and the popcorn, the family rush to the turnips they have pampered with the family mussel mud. The boys pull them, and Uncle Timothy trims their tops off with his cleaver. Father washes each in a tub and trims it into a purple-and-cream jewel. He puts his trademark on each stem by cutting it four ways with his jackknife. For this is the money crop of the year from the landward half of the farm, and the family takes great pride in the turnips' good looks. People as far down the coast as Portsmouth and as far up as Eastport will taste the flavor of mussels of the sea in the family's rutabagas come to market without crack or flaw. Twenty to thirty tons of these go from the sea farm each year. These are the family heirlooms.
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