Today, I presented students with a Powerpoint on Canadian Literature. If you were not here, a copy of these notes are available upon request.
For tomorrow's class, you are to actively read "A Field of Wheat" and write a summary and theme on the back of it. Put it on a separate sheet of paper if you don't have the room.
from A
FIELD OF WHEAT
It was the best crop of wheat
that John had ever grown; sturdy, higher than
the
knee, the heads long and filling well; a still, heat-hushed mile of it,
undulating
into
a shimmer of summer-colts and crushed horizon blue. Martha finished pulling
the
little patch of mustard that John had told her about at noon, stood a minute
5
with her shoulders strained back
to ease the muscles that were sore from bending,
then
bunched up her apron filled with the yellow-blossomed weeds and started
towards
the road. Once she looked back, her eyes shaded, across the wheat to the
dark
fallow land beside it. John was there; she could see the long, slow-settling
plume
of dust thrown up by the horses and the harrow-cart. He was a fool for
10 work, John. This
year he was farming the whole section of land without help,
managing
with two outfits of horses, one for the morning and one for the afternoon;
six,
and sometimes even seven hours a shift.
It was John who gave such allure
to the wheat. She thought of him hunched
black
and sweaty on the harrow-cart, twelve hours a day, smothering in dust,
15 shoulders sagged
wearily beneath the glare of sun. Her fingers touched the stalks
of
grain again and tightened on a supple blade until they made it squeak like a
mouse.
A crop like this was coming to him. He had had his share of failures and
set-backs,
if ever a man had, twenty times over.
Martha was thirty-seven. She had
clinched with the body and substance of
20 life; had loved, borne children - a boy
had died - and yet the quickest aches
of
life, travail, heartbrokenness, they had never wrung as the wheat wrung. For
the
wheat allowed no respite. Wasting and unending it was struggle, struggle
against
wind
and insects, drought and weeds. Not an heroic struggle to give a man courage
and
resolve, but a frantic, unavailing one. They were only poor, taunted, driven
25
things; it was the wheat that was
invincible. They only dreaded, built bright futures;
waited
for the first glint of green, watched timorous and eager while it thickened,
merged,
and at last leaned bravely to a ripple in the wind; then followed every
slip
of cloud into the horizon, turned to the wheat and away again. And it died
tantalizingly
sometimes, slowly: there would be a cool day, a pittance of rain.
30
Or perhaps it lived,
perhaps the rain came, June, July, even into August,
hope
climbing, wish-patterns painted on the future. And then one day a clench
and
tremble to John's hand; his voice faltering, dull. Grasshoppers perhaps,
sawflies
or
rust; no matter, they would grovel for a while, stand back helpless, then go
on
again. Go on in bitterness and cowardice, because there was nothing else but
35 going on.
She had loved John, for these
sixteen years had stood close watching while
he
died - slowly, tantalizingly, as the parched wheat died. He had grown unkempt,
ugly,
morose. His voice was gruff, contentious, never broke into the deep, strong
laughter
that used to make her feel she was living at the heart of things. John
40
was gone, love was gone; there was
only wheat.
Continued
Three hundred acres. Bushels,
thousands of bushels, she wouldn't even try
to
think how many. And prices up this year. It would make him young again,
lift
his head, give him spirit. Maybe he would shave twice a week as he used to
when
they were first married, buy new clothes, believe in himself again.
45
She walked down the
road towards the house, her steps quickening to the
pace
of her thoughts until the sweat clung to her face like little beads of oil. It
was
the children now, Joe and Annabelle: this winter perhaps they could send
them
to school in town and let them take music lessons. Annabelle, anyway. At
a
pinch Joe could wait a while; he was only eight. It wouldn't take Annabelle
50 long to pick up her notes; already she
played hymn tunes by ear on the organ.
She
was bright, a real little lady for manners; among town people she would learn
a
lot. The farm was no place to bring her up. Running wild and barefoot, what
would
she be like in a few years? Who would ever want to marry her but some
stupid
country lout?
55
Martha had clothes to
iron, and biscuits to bake for supper. It was hot -
heat
so intense and breathless that it weighed like a solid. An ominous darkness
came
with it, gradual and unnoticed. All at once she turned away from the stove
and
stood strained, inert. The silence seemed to gather itself, hold its breath.
She
tried
to speak to Nipper and the children, all three sprawled in a heap alongside
60
the house, but the hush over
everything was like a raised finger, forbidding her.
A
long immobile minute; suddenly a bewildering awareness that the light was
Choked;
and then, muffled, still distant, but charged with resolution, climaxing the
stillness,
a slow, long brooding heave of' thunder.
She stared into the blackness.
There it was - the hail again - the same
65
white twisting little cloud against
the black ones just as she had seen it four years
ago.
She craned her neck, looking to
see whether John was coming. The wheat,
the
acres and acres of it, green and tall, if only he had put some insurance on
it.
Damned mule - just work and work. No head himself and too stubborn to
70
listen to anyone else.
The first big drops of rain began
spitting down. Quietly, breathing hard, she
closed
the door, numb for a minute, afraid to think or move.
Martha shouted at Annabelle
hoarsely, "Go and get pillows. Here, Joe, quick,
up
on the table." She snatched him off his feet and set him on the table
beside
75
the window. "Be ready now when
the hail starts, to hold the pillow tight against
the
glass. You, Annabelle, stay upstairs at the west window in my room."
Through Joe's legs Martha caught
sight of John's long, scarecrow shape
stooped
low before the rain. Distractedly, without purpose, she ran upstairs two
steps
at a time to Annabelle. "Don't be scared, here comes your father!"
Her
80
own voice shook, craven. "Why
don't you rest your arms? It hasn't started yet."
As she spoke there was a sharp,
crunching blow on the roof, its sound
abruptly
dead, sickening, like a weapon that has sunk deep into flesh. Wildly she
shook
her hands, motioning Annabelle back to the window, and started for the
stairs.
Again the blow came; then swiftly a stuttered dozen of them.
Continued
85
She reached the kitchen just as
John burst in. With their eyes screwed up
against
the pommelling roar of the hail they stared at each other. They were
deafened,
pinioned, crushed.
Then the window broke, and Joe
and the pillow tumbled off the table before
the
howling inrush of the storm. John pushed Martha and Joe into the next room
90
and shut the door. There they found
Annabelle huddled at the foot of the stairs,
round-eyed,
biting her nails in terror.
There was hail heaped on the bed,
the pictures were blown off the walls and
broken,
the floor was swimming; the water would soak through and spoil all the
ceilings.
95
John's face quietened
her. They all crowded together, silent, averting their
eyes
from one another. Martha wanted to cry again, but dared not. Joe, awed to
calmness,
kept looking furtively at the trickle of blood on his father's face.
When at last they could go
outside they stared across the flayed yard and
garden.
The sun came out, sharp and brilliant on the drifts of hail. There was an
100
icy wind that made them shiver in
their thin cotton clothes. "No, it’s too cold on
your
feet." Martha motioned them back to the steps as she started towards the
gate
to join John. "I want to go with your father to look at the wheat. There's
nothing
anyway to see."
Nothing but the glitter of sun on
hailstones. Nothing but their wheat crushed
105 into little rags of muddy slime. Here
and there an isolated straw standing bolt
upright
in headless defiance. Martha and John walked to the far end of the field.
There was no sound but their
shoes slipping and rattling on the pebbles of ice.
Both
of them wanted to speak, to break the atmosphere of calamity that hung over
them,
but the words they could find were too small for the sparkling serenity of
110 wasted field. Even as waste it was
indomitable. It tethered them to itself, so that
they
could not feel or comprehend. It had come and gone, that was all; before
its
tremendousness and havoc they were prostrate. They had not yet risen to cry
out
or protest.
It was when they were nearly back
to the house that Martha started to
115
whimper. "I can't go on any
longer; I can't, John. There's no use, we've tried."
With
one hand she clutched him and with the other held her apron to her mouth.
"It's driving me out of my
mind. I'm so tired - heart-sick of it all. Can't you
see?''
He laid his big hands on her shoulders.
They looked at each other for a few
120
seconds, then she dropped her
head weakly against his greasy smock. Presently
he
roused her. "Here comes Joe and Annabelle!" The pressure of his hands
tightened.
His bristly cheek touched her hair and forehead. "Straighten up, quick,
before
they see you!"
It was more of him than she had
had for years. "Yes, John, I know - I'm
125
all right now."
Then he left her and she went
back to the house. Mounting within her was
a
resolve, a bravery. It was the warming sunlight, the strength and nearness of
John,
a feeling of mattering, belonging. Swung far upwards by the rush and swell
Continued
of
recaptured life, she was suddenly as far above the desolation of the storm as
130 a little while
ago she had been abject before it. But in the house she was alone;
there
was no sunlight, only a cold wind through the broken window; and she
crumpled
again.
She tried to face the kitchen, to
get the floor dried and the broken lamps
swept
up. But it was not the kitchen; it was tomorrow, next week, next year. The
135 going on, the
waste of life, the hopelessness.
John would pat her shoulder and
let her come back to this. They'd be brave,
go
on again, forget about the crop. Go on, go on - next year and the next -
go
on till they were both ready for the scrap-heap. But she'd had enough. This
time
he'd go on alone.
140 Not that she
meant it. Not that she failed to understand what John was going
through.
It was just rebellion. Rebellion because their wheat was beaten to the
ground,
because there was this brutal, callous finish to everything she had planned,
because
she had will and needs and flesh, because she was alive. Rebellion, not
John
at all - but how rebel against a summer storm, how find the throat of a
145 cloud?
So at a jerky little run she set
off for the stable, for John. Just that she
might
release and spend herself, no matter against whom or what, unloose the
fury
that clawed within her, strike back a blow for the one that had flattened her.
The stable was quiet, only the
push of hay as the horses nosed through the
150 mangers, the
lazy rub of their flanks and hips against the stall partitions; and
before
its quietness her anger subsided, took time for breath. She advanced slowly,
almost
on tiptoe, peering past the horses' rumps for a glimpse of John. To the
last
stall, back again. And then there was a sound different from the stable sounds.
She
paused.
155 She had not seen
him the first time she passed because he was pressed against
one
of the horses, his head pushed into the big deep hollow of its neck and
shoulder,
one hand hooked by the fingers in the mane, his own shoulders drawn
up
and shaking. She stared, thrust out her head incredulously, moved her lips, but
stood
silent. John sobbing there, against the horse. It was the strangest, most
160 frightening
moment of her life. He had always been so strong and grim; had just
kept
on as if he couldn't feel, as if there were a bull's hide over him, and now
he
was beaten.
She crept away. It would be
unbearable to watch his humiliation if he looked
up
and saw her.
165 Martha hurried
inside. She started the fire again, then nailed a blanket over
the
broken window and lit the big brass parlour lamp - the only one the storm
had
spared. Her hands were quick and tense. John would need a good supper
tonight.
The biscuits were water-soaked, but she still had the peas. He liked peas.
Lucky
that they had picked them when they did. This winter they wouldn't have
170 so much as an
onion or potato.
Sinclair Ross
