smoking table loaded with brains
and eggs, ham, hot biscuit, fried apples seething in their gummed
syrups, honey, golden butter, fried steak, scalding coffee. Or
there were stacked batter-cakes, rum-colored molasses, fragrant brown
sausages, a bowl of wet cherries, plums, fat juicy bacon, jam.
At the mid-day meal, they ate heavily: a huge hot roast of beef, fat
buttered lima-beans, tender corn smoking on the cob, thick red slabs
of sliced tomatoes, rough savory spinach, hot yellow corn-bread,
flaky biscuits, a deep-dish peach and apple cobbler spiced with
cinnamon, tender cabbage, deep glass dishes piled with preserved
fruits--cherries, pears, peaches. At night they might eat fried
steak, hot squares of grits fried in egg and butter, pork-chops,
fish, young fried chicken.
For the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts four heavy
turkeys were bought and fattened for weeks: Eugene fed them with cans
of shelled corn several times a day, but he could not bear to be
present at their executions, because by that time their cheerful
excited gobbles made echoes in his heart. Eliza baked for weeks
in advance: the whole energy of the family focussed upon the great
ritual of the feast. A day or two before, the auxiliary
dainties arrived in piled grocer's boxes--the magic of strange foods
and fruits was added to familiar fare: there were glossed sticky
dates, cold rich figs, cramped belly to belly in small boxes, dusty
raisins, mixed nuts--the almond, pecan, the meaty nigger-toe, the
walnut, sacks of assorted candies, piles of yellow Florida oranges,
tangerines, sharp, acrid, nostalgic odors.
Seated before a roast or a fowl, Gant began a heavy
clangor on his steel and carving knife, distributing thereafter
Gargantuan portions to each plate. Eugene feasted from a high
chair by his father's side, filled his distending belly until it was
drum-tight, and was permitted to stop eating by his watchful sire
only when his stomach was impregnable to the heavy prod of Gant's big
finger.
"There's a soft place there," he would
roar, and he would cover the scoured plate of his infant son with
another heavy slab of beef. That their machinery withstood this
hammer-handed treatment was a tribute to their vitality and Eliza's
cookery.
Gant ate ravenously and without caution. He was
immoderately fond of fish, and he invariably choked upon a bone while
eating it. This happened hundreds of times, but each time he would
look up suddenly with a howl of agony and terror, groaning and crying
out strongly while a half-dozen hands pounded violently on his back.
"Merciful God!" he would gasp finally, "I
thought I was done for that time."
"I'll vow, Mr. Gant," Eliza was vexed.
"Why on earth don't you watch what you're doing? If you
didn't eat so fast you wouldn't always get choked."
The children, staring, but relieved, settled slowly
back in their places.
He had a Dutch love of abundance: again and again he
described the great stored barns, the groaning plenty of the
Pennsylvanians.
On his journey to California, he had been charmed in
New Orleans by the cheapness and profusion of tropical fruits: a
peddler offered him a great bunch of bananas for twenty-five cents,
and Gant had taken them at once, wondering desperately later, as they
moved across the continent, why, and what he was going to do with
them.
7
This journey to California was Gant's last great
voyage. He made it two years after Eliza's return from St.
Louis, when he was fifty-six years old. In the great frame was
already stirring the chemistry of pain and death. Unspoken and
undefined there was in him the knowledge that he was at length caught
in the trap of life and fixity, that he was being borne under in this
struggle against the terrible will that wanted to own the earth more
than to explore it. This was the final flare of the old hunger
that had oncedarkened in the small gray eyes, leading a boy into new
lands and toward the soft stone smile of an angel.
And
and eggs, ham, hot biscuit, fried apples seething in their gummed
syrups, honey, golden butter, fried steak, scalding coffee. Or
there were stacked batter-cakes, rum-colored molasses, fragrant brown
sausages, a bowl of wet cherries, plums, fat juicy bacon, jam.
At the mid-day meal, they ate heavily: a huge hot roast of beef, fat
buttered lima-beans, tender corn smoking on the cob, thick red slabs
of sliced tomatoes, rough savory spinach, hot yellow corn-bread,
flaky biscuits, a deep-dish peach and apple cobbler spiced with
cinnamon, tender cabbage, deep glass dishes piled with preserved
fruits--cherries, pears, peaches. At night they might eat fried
steak, hot squares of grits fried in egg and butter, pork-chops,
fish, young fried chicken.
For the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts four heavy
turkeys were bought and fattened for weeks: Eugene fed them with cans
of shelled corn several times a day, but he could not bear to be
present at their executions, because by that time their cheerful
excited gobbles made echoes in his heart. Eliza baked for weeks
in advance: the whole energy of the family focussed upon the great
ritual of the feast. A day or two before, the auxiliary
dainties arrived in piled grocer's boxes--the magic of strange foods
and fruits was added to familiar fare: there were glossed sticky
dates, cold rich figs, cramped belly to belly in small boxes, dusty
raisins, mixed nuts--the almond, pecan, the meaty nigger-toe, the
walnut, sacks of assorted candies, piles of yellow Florida oranges,
tangerines, sharp, acrid, nostalgic odors.
Seated before a roast or a fowl, Gant began a heavy
clangor on his steel and carving knife, distributing thereafter
Gargantuan portions to each plate. Eugene feasted from a high
chair by his father's side, filled his distending belly until it was
drum-tight, and was permitted to stop eating by his watchful sire
only when his stomach was impregnable to the heavy prod of Gant's big
finger.
"There's a soft place there," he would
roar, and he would cover the scoured plate of his infant son with
another heavy slab of beef. That their machinery withstood this
hammer-handed treatment was a tribute to their vitality and Eliza's
cookery.
Gant ate ravenously and without caution. He was
immoderately fond of fish, and he invariably choked upon a bone while
eating it. This happened hundreds of times, but each time he would
look up suddenly with a howl of agony and terror, groaning and crying
out strongly while a half-dozen hands pounded violently on his back.
"Merciful God!" he would gasp finally, "I
thought I was done for that time."
"I'll vow, Mr. Gant," Eliza was vexed.
"Why on earth don't you watch what you're doing? If you
didn't eat so fast you wouldn't always get choked."
The children, staring, but relieved, settled slowly
back in their places.
He had a Dutch love of abundance: again and again he
described the great stored barns, the groaning plenty of the
Pennsylvanians.
On his journey to California, he had been charmed in
New Orleans by the cheapness and profusion of tropical fruits: a
peddler offered him a great bunch of bananas for twenty-five cents,
and Gant had taken them at once, wondering desperately later, as they
moved across the continent, why, and what he was going to do with
them.
7
This journey to California was Gant's last great
voyage. He made it two years after Eliza's return from St.
Louis, when he was fifty-six years old. In the great frame was
already stirring the chemistry of pain and death. Unspoken and
undefined there was in him the knowledge that he was at length caught
in the trap of life and fixity, that he was being borne under in this
struggle against the terrible will that wanted to own the earth more
than to explore it. This was the final flare of the old hunger
that had oncedarkened in the small gray eyes, leading a boy into new
lands and toward the soft stone smile of an angel.
And
Similar Books
