A Sunday in November I walked out to Ed Conway’s farm to see about a horse. Another day, I would’ve rode, but the sun shone brightly on the newly stick-turned trees, and the four miles seemed a fit activity. I didn’t realize until I had gotten out of town–too late to turn around–that it was a leaf-burning day, that he would surely be in a sour mood, but the horse was young and strong and Ed, not having the time or energy to break it, had promised me a good price.
As I got out of the neighborhood and into farm country, they began to appear; in front of every house, next to every barn, was a bonfire reaching up to hayloft doors, licking bare tree branches, reflecting off of dormers windows. The whole wind smelled like smoke and it blew leaf litter with it, half-burnt bits of red and brown paper.
The leaves were the final harvest, their collection and destruction the type of work that was thought to be alright to do on Sundays, more a tidying up than a labor, no disrespect to the Sabbath. The houses in town had mostly raked up and burned their leaves weeks before, but farmers were occupied with more pressing collections: peaches before the snap of cold was more than a taste on the wind’s breath, then corn, apples, hay, wheat, then squash, pumpkins, potatoes. Cows to be brought in from grazing before snow, the cornstalks cut down before frost, the chicken coops re-wired before the coyotes waxed hungry. Folks working twelve, thirteen hour days, and whole families getting home from the fields after dark and leaving again before dawn, and nobody thinks of the crunch of paths clogged with leaves, the carpets laid out on front lawns, the leaf-litter dust left on the ankles–shins, even–of pant legs.
It was all finished now. Hired workers had gone, gleaners, even, too. First frost had blighted bare stems and churned up soil, light snow had blanketed dying roots and newly-baled hay. The fields sat bare and ragged, home now to freeze-thaw puddles and not much else, even the exposed dirt looking sickly and tired, waiting for its snow cover, for a few months of rest before it was pushed around again, coaxed to bring another season to life.
So, finally: the raking: the leaves. By three o’clock on that Sunday a diligent farmer would have leaned his rake aside and brought a match or a candle or a log from the woodstove, out onto the leaf pile, as tall as himself or taller. Now men stood outside, backs slump-tired, turned from the roads to watch their personal blazes. Couples young and old leaned together and towards the heat, children played and ran in leafless front yards. I passed slowly. Bertie Shankton waved to me, triumph on his face. Beth Hardwell roasted apples over the coals of a nearly-burnt-out leaf life, and I watched her place one into one of the Hardwell children’s mittened hands and sprinkle just a touch of brandy (I figured, from a distance) on top, and then a ribbon of molasses.
The Lajoie kids were running around, looking for forgotten leaves to throw into the flames and watch crinkle. The Stoffers still had extended family on from the harvest, and they all stood around the piles, two of them, and more people than I could count while walking by, everyone singing a round.
I knew Ed Conway, industrious man as he was, would have raked all his leaves up, but would be biding his time, letting the wind strew out the pile, not ready to put a light to it. He always made his bonfire out into a funeral pyre.
I remember Jacob Hardwell once telling me that the end of harvest was his “deliverance,” that he thought himself the bear before hibernation, waiting for the day he had fattened up enough to lie down for the long night of winter. Not so for Ed Conway; winter for him was becoming the leafless, fruitless apple tree, its branches all twisted and shaking in the wind. He couldn’t feel the pride of harvest once he had finished tending to it–full haylofts and full cellars only made him miss the full fields and full soil.
When I made it to his farm he was in his front yard, still raking, herding three leaves at a time across his empty, gray lawn, into the leaf pile.
“Here about the horse, Morley?” he called to me as I stepped off the road.
“Aye.” I grinned at him. “And you? Killing time? Figured you would be.”
“You know me,” he said, half smiling, half wincing, as he turned to face me.
“Why don’t you just bite the bullet and light them up? Fall’s going whether you try to stop it or not.”
I had said it mostly in jest, but there was a blade of truth in it, and I could see the words injure him. He turned grave.
“Let an old man do as he pleases, Jim,” he said, softly. “Come, I’ll show you the horse,” he followed, turning his tone and his back to the pile.
Ed had told me the horse was half-broken, but she was still wild and ornery, thrashing as soon as I stepped towards her.
“We call her Bella.”
“More like Belladonna,” I said, studying the horse. Under the dark coat, I could see muscles taut with strength. The face was set in a sort of grimace. Ed chuckled.
“You can call her that, if you take her,” he said.
I laughed, and then there was silence, besides the feet of the horse shuffling on the ground.
“You gonna try her out?” asked Ed. He was talking to me, but he didn’t so much as move his head, his gaze still turned to the potato field, all piles of overturned dirt and scattered, brown-turning vines.
“I will, but don’t stand here slack-jawed watching, thinking that if you don’t look at the pile, you can put it off,” I said to his turned head. For a moment he didn’t speak.
“Neddy’s in town, and I’m waiting for him.” Ed’s son and his family had been staying with him for the past month, helping with the harvest.
“Did he ask you to wait?” I was sure that Ed’s son, a grudging participant in country affairs, hadn’t. I was being cruel, needlessly, asking questions I knew the answer to. I couldn’t say why.
“He’d want me to. Used to be damn near his favorite day of the year, ‘sides Christmas.” He still hadn’t turned his head, and he sounded farther away. “Used to love to scare himself, swiping his hand through the fire, jumping over the coals.
I was nearly on the horse by then, which had gotten used to me enough that she allowed me to approach. “Here, Bella,” I cooed to the horse, leaning up to her ear to be heard through the breeze. Maybe Ed said more–at some point he walked back towards the house, and I didn’t notice until I had managed to get up onto the horse. I was damn near being bucked off, my head whipping back and forth in all directions, and not finding Ed in any of them.
Maybe twenty minutes later I found Ed out back behind the house, chopping wood.
“I’ll take her,” I said. Ed looked back at me, letting his ax fall besides him without so much as glancing at it–no “careful” in the language of an ax used enough time to mold to a man’s grip. At least, that’s what I figured.
With his eyes, he asked, “really?”
“How much?” I said, meeting him at the woodpile.
“Forty,” he said.
“Thirty-five?”
“Jim, it’s the Lord’s day.” I knew Ed wasn’t a religious man, just one fearing judgement.
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” We both laughed. “Fine,” I said. “Forty.”
“You want her today?”
“Yessir. I’ve got forty on me.” I had brought fifty and would’ve paid as much. I counted it out, the bills another pile of dry leaves for him to put off being rid of.
“Say,” said I, as I watched Ed tuck the money carefully in his pocket, folding the bills in the same motion,“You having a Thanksgiving round your place?”
He thought for a moment, looking off. “No, not likely, with Neddy gone tomorrow and Anna leaving for Northampton next week.”
“Button factory, again?”
“Textile, this year. She’s looking forward to it. Big weaving machines…” he trailed off. “It’ll be quiet here by then.”
“Well, why don’t you come over to our place, then?” I asked. “Sarah’s cooking turkey.”
He made to think about it. “On a Thursday, hmm. Might have work to do,” he grumbled.
I half-rolled my eyes. “You won’t Ed, and you know it. Certainly not enough to keep you home.” I said, harsh again.
“You’re right, you’re right, I only… peculiar switching, from having something to do every hour of sunlight half the year, then in winter you’re barely doing anything, but feels like you’re working twice as hard just staying alive.” He looked down, and rubbed one of his eyes, as if just the thought of the months ahead had already worn him down.
“Nobody said it was easy. Maybe that’s why Neddy wants to stay in the city,” I said.
“He’ll come around.” He stopped, looking up southwest to the low, small sun. “He’ll come around. You best be getting home, before dark. Taking Bella today?”
I nodded and reached out to shake his hand. “Thanksgiving?”
“I’ll see if I can make it.”
Suddenly, an eagerness to leave came on, an urgency to go before Neddy came home, before a match touched the leaf pile. As soon as we had shaken hands, I made my way, quick as possible, to the barn the horse was hitched to.
“Belladonna,” I said softly to the horse as I flung myself on without so much as my bearings. She tried to buck me off again, with only a little less vigor than she had the first time. I was only half-sure I’d be able to steer her home while keeping myself in one piece, but relieved to feel some living, twisting, wild thing carrying me forward, desperate to hear her footsteps beneath me, leaves on the road being kicked up, dead dirt being pounded alive again.
I passed the leaf pile as I went, as still and symmetrical as if it were made of marble, and Ed Conway, standing, looking up at it. I wouldn’t know, and didn’t care to know, whether he burned the pile that evening.
In the windless glow of the setting sun, I almost thought I could hear him saying, once more, “He’ll come around.”
And again and again, it was the line I heard in the horse’s hoofbeats, a prayer bearing me home. “He’ll come around.” Leaves rustling. “He’ll come around.” Mud squelching. “He’ll come around.” Hooves pounding. Twigs breaking. Night falling. Winter, too.