Excerpt from "Machine Dreams"

I was like an only child, growing up alone with my mother. She'd lost those three babies before me, and my brother and sister who survived were ten and twelve years older - out of the house by the time I needed someone to talk to. They had grown up very differently - Dad had money then. Mother's furniture was new; the house was kept up; the street, with all those big trees shading the sidewalk, was referred to as Quality Hill. Dad had the biggest lumber business in the state at one time. He was twenty-five years older than Mother and she was his second wife; at the time they married, he had grown children nearly her age. Even though he was rich, her parents hadn't wanted her to go with him - I guess he had quite a reputation: an eccentric, a womanizer. Her family ran a small hotel in Pickens. That town is a ghost town now but the building, the old hotel, is still standing. Did I ever take you to see it? He stayed there on business trips and Mother had seen him come and go. One night she was clerking at the check-out desk and he suddenly noticed her. She was seventeen; he must have seemed worldly and dashing. After a few months of courtship and presents - mostly by mail - they eloped and went to Niagara Falls for a wedding trip. It was her first time away from home since childhood; all her clothes were new and they stayed in a suite of grand rooms. Mother told me how she'd sit up at night, writing letters back about the steamer boat and the spray of the Falls; how the spray turned colors in the sun but was cold even in summer and smelled to her of mint or violets. She begged her mother to forgive her, but the letters weren't answered; it was a year before they'd let her come visit.
Dad brought her home through Hampton to impress her. Now it's just shacks bought out by the mines and fallen to ruin, but then it was a town of forty frame saltboxes he'd built by the river to house his workers. The mill hands lined the tracks and cheered as the train pulled in.
They lived there near the mill in the master house for the first couple of years. She was a help to him in the business, though he never admitted as much and pretended not to take her advice. Soon he moved her to the big house in town and was home every other night; he was accustomed to doing just as he liked and had a succession of "secretaries" out at the mill. My sister told me she remembered a big row between them when she was thirteen or so. I was just a baby. He'd hired a manager that summer and was going to be in town most of the time; he said there was a lot of work to do and he was going to move his secretary into one of the spare rooms down the hall from his. Mother said she'd sooner march down the street naked than take one of his women under her own roof. He said by God it was his roof, he'd paid for every inch of it. He did move the girl in for a few weeks - daughter of one of the mill workers. She wasn't very bright and Mother ended up being nice to her, but my sister hated Dad from that time on and never spoke to him again except when threatened. But what toys she had as a child! China dolls and a dollhouse with a circular staircase. I think of those times as grand because they had no money worries, but Dad was always hard to live with. Still, he was a shiny figure, dapper, and gone from home enough that they were often left in peace.
By the time I was seven the mill was lost and he was a terror, sentimental or raging. He'd always been a drinker but he drank more; he'd extended credit to Easterners and what we called Gypsies - Italians from upstate river towns. He liked being owed and flattered, begged for more time. He thought he was doing good works by letting his buyers go further and further into debt, and the Depression finished him.
We got along, but just barely. Mother had kept every stitch my elder sister hadn't worn out, and she made those clothes over to fit me. My dresses were always mismatched affairs of good fabrics, twelve years out of style. I liked them and thought I looked grown-up. We kept a big garden and canned for weeks - she had a full pantry and those cloudy jars fed us through the winter. Any money we had came from the sale of milk or cream or butter - we had four cows in the barn, up the hill back of the house. Mother did the work year-round but I remember the cows especially in summer. We seemed to spend the long days in attendance to them while Dad sat on the porch or disappeared into the unused room on the stifling third floor of the house. He was totally unpredictable and talked to himself. Sometimes he fed the cows or walked out in the evening to inspect the barn, to knock on the falling boards with his fist and listen as though testing the wood. But he did chores as a whim. Usually I fed the cows and chickens. It used to occur to me at the age of seven and eight how stupid those cows were - like big warm rocks. Though we came to the barn every day at regular times, they didn't recognize us except as they'd recognize rain or snow. They didn't even have the nervousness and greed of the chickens, but ate placidly, like machines. The only time they seemed at all human was at calving, and that was terrible to watch. They bawled in pain and seemed bewildered, as though they didn't know what hurt them. Then the calf was out in the straw, blinking.
Mother milked into a quart cup and dumped the milk in a can. When the can was full she pulled it to the house in a hand wagon. We had the coolest cellar, like a still tomb, with stone walls and a stone floor. Rough shelves along the side were lined with mason jars sealed full of tomatoes and beans and beets. The jars were just jars but you were always aware of them in the dimness, dense and weighted. The milk crocks were on the floor, white earthen urns. Mother wore a long man's apron over her dress and skimmed the cream off the milk with a wooden spoon shaped like a small flat spade. We dipped the milk back into the cans with a gourd dipper and carried them up the stone steps, across the yard into the kitchen. The bottles had to be boiled and the milk strained through a sterile cloth. She set some of it aside and let it curdle to frothy clumps the size of popcorn, then poured that heavy yellow cream over it and ground fresh pepper on top. Her cheese was famous but I wouldn't touch it, and they had to beg me to drink milk. I guess I didn't like it because we were always fooling with it, from dawn to dusk, the cows and the milk and the bottles.
Mr. Hardesty delivered for us and I helped him in the summer. I could see him driving the cart along from way down the street. He had an old barrel-chested workhorse named Gus, and that horse knew every stop by heart. Gus was well known around town. Mr. Hardesty did landscaping and plowing as well - Gus wore blinders then and pulled a big double rake by harness; they graded yards for seeding or turned gardens. When we delivered milk, I met them at the top of the hill and handed up our four metal racks of four bottles each. Then I rode beside Hardesty and jumped down to take the orders to the doorsteps. The horse always waited just long enough. There was one customer who'd died a couple of years before I'd ever started helping, but Gus stopped at that house anyway. We sat waiting the time it would have taken me to run to the door and back.