The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1935-09-05
resentment on to his son, young Rod

Two years after her marriage to
Roderick Willard when her stepsons
were in high school at Heron River,
Sophronia had had her first news of
Jim. He and Silver were in Alaska.
Jim did not say what he was doing.
but Silver was being looked after in
a convent school. Jim sent two thou
sand dollars, that time, for Phronie to
carry On the work of the farmland
no questions asked. The farm was
paying it's way then and more. Phro-
ME thought Jim had probably gone
crazy.
Next year Jim was in Nevada. And
later in Mexico. Mining, he said. His
daughter was also in Mexico, in the
care Of nuns, and was learning Span
ish and German and French. Soph-
roma, remembering the fair child of
seven, who was so much like that
dreamy, foreign mother of hers, Won
dered. Sophronia wrote Jim then that
her husband Roderick Willard, want
ed to buy him out. But Jim had some
sentimental attachment for the place,
because of his wife Anna, who had
called it Ygdrasil. That word, in
Morse mythology, Anna had said,
meant. the Tree of Life. There was q
huge oak in front of the old Grenoble
farm house.
They couldn't bulge Jim. He re-
fused to sell. Why did he want to
hang on to a farm that he never
meant to visit again? He was gamb-
ling for a living. Sophronia would
have guessed that, even though Newt
Fisher, who had run into him in
Nevada, hadn't brought the news
back. But his wife Anna had curious
ly loved her Ygdrasil-silly name,
woman! Sophronia always grew un-
comfortable when she thought of
Anna. Well, who hadn't loved her {?
She was gentle as spring rain.
And what would this daughter of
hers be like? Sophronia wondered
with misgiving. Product of converts
(of all things-and Jim raised Pres
byterianD and boarding schools from
Nome to icaragua-daughter of a
fairy mother who had died at twenty
eight, and father madden than his
own grand father, who would lay bets
with the moon as to the color of it's
back-hair-what would the daughter
be like? She had been born on this
farm, it was true, but would she re-
member anything of it that was sane
and sound?
Phronie had gone on washing the
separator. She struggled to thrust
back her memories of Jim, to recall
only his unfairness, his selfishness.
But it was good. D-n him! D-n
him! Why couldn't he have come
back, just once? She had wheeled him
through the potato patch in his go
cart when he was a year old, and had
been spanked for it afterwards. She,
five years his senior, had taught him
to play numblety-peg and to skin
slippery elm. And he hadn't come
back.
Now this young Anna Grenoble-
Silver, Phonie amended with a sniff
would probably sell her share of
the land Immediately to one of those
concerns in the city that was buying
up sections around here for pit
lance, against the time when the
land would be worth something again.
Silver Grenoble would have no use
for a dreary existence on northern
farm, where taxes were a nightmare
that continued through the day,
through every hour Of merciless toll.
No doubt Jim had left her well pro-
vided for, and it would mean only the
turn Of a wrist, pen in hand, for her
to dispose TO negligible property.
To young Roddy. twenty-seven
now, with agricultural college behind
him, it would be a staggering blow.
He had never given up hope of one
day owning the entire farm. 49,
It was like Roddy that yesterday
he should have gone off to Ballantyne
in his car, saying only that he had to
20. Sophrona had her own ideas as to
why he had gone, but she did not
press his confidence. She thought un-
easily of the letters that had come to
him from Balantyne in the past week
or so, and of his niggardly disclosure
of their contnets. It was no secret to
any one that the Ballantyne bank had