Summer-Filth
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Anonymous 1250
August had swelled tight with fruits of labor, standing in the fields and hanging over the fences. Late peaches threatened to splits forks on their trees and one bite into a sun-hot peach released nectar that kept bees coming all afternoon to spots on the missus’s t-shirt. Ripe plums enticed baggy brown ground hogs to feats of tree-climbing, which had made her utter such strong words as, "My stars!" and "Land o’Goshen!" Some days, there wouldn’t be any point in hanging out wet laundry in the heavy atmosphere. A housewife could lean into this air, almost– grab a double armful, and squeeze out moisture that would leave her blouse wet. Right after turning off the riding mower, if she listened very carefully to the new silence, she could hear the high vibration made by fungus spores hovering–cedar-apple rust over the apples, black spot over the roses and powdery mildew over the clean, green of the lilacs. This morning, lying in bed, she had decided, no, realized that she was not going to have any more children.
This time of year, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, thin-wheeled buggies of the Plain Folk were forced to share right-of-way with the fat tires belonging to tourists, who came to ride behind a steam engine on the Strassburg Railway or the water slide at Dutch Wonderland. At some level though, everybody knew the real reason they came was to load the eyes with the vision of plenty. She always felt there was something inside responding to blood-red tomatoes under the vines and the way alfalfa humps across a field, the udder-cautious walk of milkers heading for the barn or a crazy-quilt of row-crops filling in the ear. Even though he was more of a spring-type, Houseman, one of her secret, favorite poets had written, "On the idle hill of summer, / sleepy with the flow of streams...,."
In the worst of the heat, locals generally sought out the tall shade of a Kieffer pear with a glass of iced tea. She guessed she was a local, as she settled down by the grape wall in late-fading light with lemonade for herself and her husband. It was all the tourists, she supposed that made her feel funny about it. She felt stunned with the filling of the summer and the effort both they and the land put forth to bring it on. The zucchini were just out of control and the morning’s sweat-of-the brow was spent among their prickly, delicate leaves, to prevent them either succumbing to fungus and borers or taking over the world. She had half a card file of zucchini recipes. VF resistant tomatoes let a body get away without spraying, so the elegantly ugly tomato horn-worms could share the vines. One thing she had learned by this point in her gardening career was–don’t plant too many cherry tomatoes. The sound of her creaking back nearly drowned out the crickets for her, as she stooped and bent among the funny-smelling vines, coming up with a couple of Early Girls in the palm of her hand or the dead, red weight of a Beefsteak. Maybe a trio of Yellow Pears would leap into the hand, like schmoos, but with cherry tomatoes it would be pick, pick, pick, till you’d know why chickens have no brains. Watermelons were a better value for labor invested in harvesting them–bend once and come up laughing, with twenty, gratifying pounds of green and grey-striped booty, which would have justified Africa’s existence all by itself.
J.R.R. Tolkien had recounted a festival of the Hobbits called "summer-filth." One Saturday, while the kids had burrowed in the low shelves, she had gone through all the library’s dictionaries looking, but it was a wild word, which had escaped reference books. She decided it must have been derived from the Goth word, "fill," for abundance, as "wealth" derives from "weal," meaning prosperity, and as "growth,"stems from, "grow." August was summer-filth. It was good, but uncomfortable, like pregnancy. So when the Wine Fest opened, she just picked up an went.
The old DeKalb farm must have been just the sort of prosperous holding Lee’s regulars would have set on like dogs, when they came scavenging out of the south. The big barns and saw-mill would have supplied and provendered regiments. From the low, stone-walled vault of the spring house, cheese, eggs, milk, butter, and lard would have been snatched from the cooling water. The root cellar’s wooden doors, set flush with the earth, would have been torn open for what turnips, parsnips and potatoes remained from the previous autumn.
The fields were set about with grape vines, now, and the wine festival issued a standing invitation for armies to invade to live country music. They lost the kids first thing, but it didn’t matter. She decided that in theory, it might be possible to enjoy a glass of the previous summer’s crush in one hand and a funnel-cake in the other. A wandering minstrel, dressed in a home-made costume, strummed as he sang,
"Hey nonny no!
Men are fools that wish to die!
Is’t not fine to dance and sing
When the bells of death do ring?
Is’t not fine to swim in wine,
And turn upon the toe,
And sing hey nonny no!
When the winds blow and the seas flow?
Hey nonny no!"
The big farm house was open to the public. She tugged her husband in the main door, with other small groups of family or friends, and together as a loose mob, they wandered the hallways, examining what her real favorite poet, Hopkins (really more of an autumn-dweller), called, "their gear and tackle and trim," and wondering what it must have been to live inside these thick stone walls. What pride must have been taken by the first woman of this house in the fan of windows that gave bright afternoon light to the upper landing of the broad staircase. A dust-defying cabinet had been set on the landing to display household glassware of the sort which surely was reserved for those times when special guests rode in to dinner. She happened to be staring at yellow glass funnels that stood in the case when the large tree outside slumped its shoulders, spilling thick syrup-of-sun through the window, and suddenly, the glasses filled and all at once, she, too, felt like yellow glass.
appeared August, 2001