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Harvest in the Moon

Herbert Ernest Bates (1905-1974)

The barley-field lay while in the lull moonlight, cleared of its crop except for a cluster of shocks standing like dwarf tents under an old hawthorn hedge. The cart was making its last journey. The moon, rising fast and growing whiter every moment, was turning the black marc to roan with its radiance, and the men's pitchforks to silver. For miles the land lay visible, quiet and stark, not even the shadow of a bird flickering across it and its windless silence broken only by the clack of cartwheels in the stubble-ruts and the voices of the two children urging on and slopping the horse. Alexander was nine and the girl, Cathy, was fourteen. The boy had the bridle in his right hand, his fingers boldly close to the mare's wet mouth. The girl, dark-haired, tall for her age and too big for her tight cotton dress, was holding the bridge also, in her left hand, though there was no need for it. Up on the cart the boy's uncle was loading the sheaves that the girl's father picked and tossed lightly up to him with a single nick of his fork. The girl, tall enough to rest her head against the horse's neck, would sometimes hold the bridle in both hands, her fingers casually stretched under the mare's silky mouth, as though by accident, to touch the boys fingers. Impatient of it, he would snatch at the bridle, half to frighten the horse and half to frighten her into taking her hand away, and if the horse started on he would seize the chance of a swagger and would lug at the bridle and would lift his voice in manful anger;

"Whoa! damn you. Stan' still."

"Here! What the nation you saying?" His uncle would growl the reprimand. "By God, if your father heard that talk."

"Stan' still," the boy would say as though in soft correction of himself. "Stan'still, mare, stan'still."

Then he would walk round to the back of the cart ostensibly to see if the load were silting right but in reality to see if his bow, made of green willow, and his arrows, made of horned wheat-straws tipped with soft-pithed stems of young elder were still where he had hidden them secretly in a slot above the cart-springs.

"Alexander," the girl would say entreatingly as she followed him. "Alexander." The boy in disgust would go back to the marc, and the girl, following, would hold the bridle again and caress the mare's nose, murmuring softly. Suddenly, as they were loading the last of the sheaves by the hedge-side, the men shouted: "A leveret! After it, boy! After it! A leveret!"

In the bright moonlight the leveret was clearly visible leaping across the stubble and then doubling to hide in the few remaining shocks. The boy let go the horse's bridle and a second later was hunting the young hare between the barley shocks, urged on and taunted by the men: "After it, after it. Ah! you ain't quick enough. There it is, after it! Ah! you lost it." When the leveret disappeared the boy stopped, at a loss.

"It went in the last shock," said Cathy.

She had followed him in the hunt, and now she followed him as he ran to the shock and began swishing it and beating it with his hands and rustling the sheaves in order to scare the leveret. Then when he began to unbuild the shock she also helped to throw the sheaves aside, and at last the leveret bolted again, scurrying wildly across the moonlit stubble for the hedge.

"In the ditch!" the men called. "You'll have him. He'll skulk! You'll have him." Alexander, tearing across the stubble, flung himself into the ditch. He heard the soft rustle of the girl's dress slipping into the dry grass behind him, and a moment later she was beside him, panting quietly. "You go that way," he said.

"He went your way," she said.

"Listen!" he whispered. "Listen!"

In the ditch there was the faintest rustling. They lay still together, the girl touching him.

"Behind you!" he shouted. "Behind you!"

Springing up, he scrambled past the girl and ran back up the ditch, kicking the dry grasses with both feel as he ran. There was a mad scuttling as the leveret broke loose again, and struggled among the dead thorn stumps of the hedge to make its wild escape into the field beyond. Flinging himself down in a last attempt to catch it, Alexander lay deep among the dry grasses in an attitude of listening and watching. There was no sound except the girl's breathing as she too lay listening. But in the blaze of the moonlight the stubble, seen from the ditch, seemed like a vast white plain with the barley-sheaves like an encampment of tents upon it and the loaded cart like a covered wagon being unhitched for the night. The girl had crept along the ditch to lie beside him and for the first time he was glad that she was so near.

"We're Indians!" he whispered.

Without speaking she lay very close to him and put one hand across his shoulders, but he was so absorbed in watching the plain, the tents, and the wagon in the moonlight that he was hardly aware of it. "Don't move," he said. "They mustn't see us. Don't move."

"Let's stay here," she said.

"Be quiet! They'll hear us."

They lay very quiet and motionless together, watching and listening, the girl so close to him that her long hair touched his face and her soft stockinged legs his own. He felt a tine intensity of excitement, as though he were really an Indian stalking the while tents of a strange enemy. The girl, too, seemed to he excited and before long he could feel her trembling.

"You're frightened," he accused her softly.

"A bit," she said.

Rustling her hand in the grass she found one of his and held it. Her fingers were hot and quivering.

"Alexander," she began.

But at that moment he became aware of a calamity. He, an Indian, had left his bow and arrows in their secret hiding-place by the cart-springs; and since the men were his enemies and the barley-sheaves the enemy tents he must recover them. Without heeding the girl, except to silence her with a soft "sssh!" he squirmed up from the ditch and began to draw himself along the sun-baked stubble towards the cart, scratching his bare flesh on the stubble and thistles and the harsh dock-stems without heeding the pain. Now and then he would squirm and swerve in his course and slip snaking back into the ditch, the girl following him all the time as surely as though she were obeying his commands. Out on the stubble, in the radiance of the high moon, the faces of the two men loading the last sheaves were as clear as though it were a midsummer day. Whenever the cart and the men halted, the Held was hushed and the boy lay motionless in these silent pauses, not even breathing.

At last only two shocks remained to be loaded, and the boy, unseen, had crept level with the cart, with the girl close behind him. In another moment, as soon as the sheaves had been loaded and the cart was going up the Held, he would break from hiding and capture the how and arrows and the wagon and lie triumphant.

"Alexander," the girl entreated in a loud whisper. Her hand was trembling more than ever as she touched him and her face was so warm and soft as she pressed it to his that he fell impatient and embarrassed. "We're Indians," he reminded her savagely. "I don't want to be an Indian," she said. He silenced her with a whisper of abrupt scorn. He was an Indian, a man, powerful. Why couldn't she keep quiet? Why was she trembling all the time?

"You're only a squaw," he said. "Keep quiet."

With that devastating flash of scorn he dismissed her and in another moment forgot her. Out on the prairie, in the moonlight, his enemies had taken up their tents. It was the critical moment. He crouched on his toes and on one knee, like a runner. Me saw the load-rope tossed high and wriggle like a stricken snake above the cart in the moonlight. Then he heard the tinkle of hooks as the rope was fastened and the men's repeated "Gel up, get up" to the mare and at last the clack of wheels as the cart moved off across the empty field.

It was his moment. "Alexander," the girl was saying. "Don't let's be Indians." Her hand was softly warm and quivering on his neck and she was leaning her face to his as though to be kissed.

He shook her off with a gesture and a growl of impatience. A moment later he was fleeing across the stubble at a stooping run, an Indian. The two men, his enemies, were walking by the mare's head, oblivious of him. But he hardly heeded them and he forgot the girl in his excitement at reaching the cart and Finding his bow and arrows in the secrecy of its black shadow.

He rested his arrow on his bow-string in readiness to shoot. Then he had another thought. The load, being the last, was only half a load. He would climb up and lie there, on lop of it, invincible and unseen.

Tucking his arrows in his shirt and holding his bow in his teeth and catching the load-rope, he pulled himself up, the barley-stubs jabbing and scratching at his face, and in a second or two he lay triumphant on the white sheaves in the white moonlight.

Fixing an arrow again, he looked back down the Field. Cathy was walking up the stubble, ten yards behind the cart. He had forgotten her. And now, with his face pressed close over a sheaf edge, he called to her in a whisper, an Indian whisper, of excited entreaty:

"Come on, come on!"

But she walked as though she saw neither him nor the cart, her face tense with distant pride.

"Come on," he insisted. "You're my squaw. Come on."

But now she was rustling her feel in the stubble and staring down at them with intent indifference. Why did she look like that? What was the matter with her? He called again, "Cathy, Cathy, come on." Couldn't she hear him? "It's grand up here," he called softly. "It's grand. Come on." In the bright moonlight he could sec the set stillness of proud indifference on her face grow more intense. He couldn't understand it. He thought again that perhaps she couldn't hear. And he gave one more whisper of entreaty and then, half-lying on his back, shot a straw arrow in the air towards her, hoping it would curve short and drop at her feet and make her understand. Silting up, he saw the arrow, pale yellow, dropping towards the girl in the moonlight. It fell very near her, but she neither looked nor paused and the look of injury and pride on her face seemed to have turned to anger. He lay back on the sheaves, his body flat and his head in a rough sweet nest of barley-ears. Pulling the bow hard he shot an arrow straight into the moonlight, and then another and another, watching them soar and curve and fall like lightless rockets.

At last he lay and listened. Nothing had happened. There was no sound. He listened for the girl, but she did not come. He gave it up. It was beyond him. And almost arrogantly he freed another arrow into the sky and watched and listened for its fall, shrugging his shoulders a little when nothing happened. In another moment, forgetting the girl and half forgetting he was an Indian, he lay back in the fragrant barley with a sense of great elation, very happy.

Far above him the sky seemed to be travelling backwards into space and the moon was so bright that it out shone the stars.