Someplace to Call Home

by Sandra Dallas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 Sandra Dallas

  Cover illustration copyright © 2019 Steve Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles.

  All inquiries should be addressed to:

  Sleeping Bear Press™

  2395 South Huron Parkway, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

  www.sleepingbearpress.com

  © Sleeping Bear Press

  Printed and bound in the United States.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dallas, Sandra, author.

  Title: Someplace to call home / written by Sandra Dallas.

  Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Sleeping Bear Press, [2019] | Summary: In 1933, when twelve-year-old Hallie Turner and her brothers, Tom and Benny, take to the road seeking whatever work they can get, they find kindness in small-town Kansas.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019004065 | ISBN 9781585364145 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dust Bowl Era, 1931-1939--Juvenile fiction. | Depressions--1929--Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Dust Bowl Era, 1931-1939--Fiction. | Depressions--1929--Fiction. | Brothers and sisters--Fiction. | Orphans--Fiction. | Poverty--Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.D1644 So 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004065

  This is for Forrest Athearn and for his great-grandfather,

  Forrest Dallas

  —SANDRA

  Contents

  Chapter One: Broken Down

  Chapter Two: We’re Not Squatters

  Chapter Three: The Hired Man’s Cabin

  Chapter Four: Happy Days

  Chapter Five: School Days

  Chapter Six: Jimmy

  Chapter Seven: The Offer

  Chapter Eight: Supper Guests

  Chapter Nine: Ragman

  Chapter Ten: Christmas

  Chapter Eleven: Harold

  Chapter Twelve: More Trouble

  Chapter Thirteen: Hallie’s Discovery

  Chapter Fourteen: Benny

  Chapter Fifteen: Home

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  chapter one

  Broken Down

  The battered old Model T Ford sputtered and stalled. With a sigh, sixteen-year-old Tom Turner guided it to the side of the dirt road. He slid out of the worn seat on the driver’s side and stood next to the vehicle, stopping a moment as he heard a hissing sound. He shook his head. “The transmission’s bad, and it looks like we blew a tire, too.”

  Hallie Turner took a deep breath. “As Mommy used to say, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. More bad luck.”

  “Not so bad,” Tom said. He pointed to a grove of trees. “If we had to break down, at least we found a nice shady spot.”

  Hallie glanced around. She said to the little boy on the seat beside her, “Look, Benny, there’s a stream.”

  Benny brightened. “I like water,” he said. He slid over the seat, jumping out on the driver’s side. He had been sitting between Hallie and Tom.

  “Careful, Benny,” Hallie called. She watched her little brother run toward the water.

  “Don’t worry. It looks like there’s not but a trickle of water in it,” Tom told her.

  “That’s good. You know how he is with water. He could drown in a tin cup.”

  Hallie opened the passenger door of the Tin Lizzie and got out. She looked around. It was indeed a pretty spot—the trees, the stream, and a patch of yellow dandelions nodding in the sun. She stretched and dug her bare toes into the dirt. She shook her dress, which was covered with dust that had blown in through the open window.

  The car, too, was covered with grime. The whole world except for this little spot seemed to be dirty. When the dust had gotten too bad, Hallie had rolled up the car windows and stuffed rags where they didn’t quite close. That didn’t stop the dirt from blowing in. She had to wipe the inside of the car clean every night. “I guess if the car’s broke down, we’ll be staying for a spell,” she said. She grasped the handle of the door to close it and quickly removed her hand. She should have known better than to touch the metal. It was burning hot from the sun.

  “We don’t have much choice. I can patch the tire again.” Tom glanced at the tire that seemed to be more patches than tire. “But we’ll have to replace the transmission. How much money do we have left?”

  “Four dollars and twelve cents.” Hallie didn’t have to look into the ragged coin purse. She knew to the penny how much was in it.

  “Not enough for the transmission. I’ll have to find work.”

  Hallie laughed. “Where are you going to do that? We’ve tried everywhere. Not more than two days’ work in the field in the past two weeks. If we hadn’t found those tomatoes last week, we’d be eating grass.”

  She thought of the deserted house they’d stopped at with three perfectly good tomato plants loaded with fruit. She shook her head at the wonder of it. They guessed the farmer had been dusted out. That’s what folks said when the dust storms destroyed crops, forcing farmers to desert their homes. Somehow the tomato plants had thrived. They were all tired of tomatoes by now, but they were grateful for them nonetheless.

  “That was good luck, all right. Maybe our luck’s changed.”

  “I wouldn’t call a busted transmission good luck,” Hallie told her brother.

  “I guess you’re right about that.” Tom went back to the Ford. “I’d best unload this old Tin Lizzie. You look after Benny.” Tom stood next to the open lid of the car’s rumble seat. He began taking out boxes containing quilts and blankets, a tarp, a collection of pots and pans, and a few dishes. “Where should I put these?”

  Hallie looked about. Then she pointed to a secluded spot hidden by trees. “We don’t want anyone seeing us from the road,” she said. Of course, anybody driving by would notice the car. Maybe they’d think it was abandoned. The flivver was that old and dilapidated. Tom had had to remove the leather bench in the rumble seat to make room for their belongings, to Benny’s disappointment. He had loved to ride in the back in the open air. Now Tom spread the tarp on the ground. Next, he removed two thin mattresses tied to the roof of the car and laid them on top of the tarp.

  Hallie watched him, then turned back to Benny. The six-year-old was sitting beside the stream. Every now and then, he stuck his foot into the water, then pulled it back and laughed. “I’m wet,” he said.

  Hallie went to the creek and tickled his toes. She thought what a happy, good-natured boy he was.

  “I like water, Hallie,” he said again.

  Hallie scooped up a handful of water and sprinkled it on Benny’s head. He giggled. “That will cool you off,” she said. She splashed water over her arms and legs, too. Despite the shade of the trees, she was hot. It seemed it was always hot in Kansas. In Oklahoma, too. She couldn’t remember the last time it had rained.

  “I want my boat,” Benny said. The boat was his favorite toy.

  Hallie went to a box that Tom had set down. She rummaged through it until she found a battered wooden boat. Tom had carved it and painted it, too. The paint was mostly worn off now. “You play with it while I help Tom,” she told Benny.

  She stretched to get the kinks out of her back. Hallie wasn’t just hot. She was tired from riding for days down the dirt roads looking for work. Tom had stopped at farms, asking if anyone needed help. No one did. Crops were poor
because of the drought. Farmworkers were plentiful. Many farmers couldn’t pay for hired help even if they needed it. Those who could pay wanted grown men. “Me and my sister can do the work of two men and be paid half as much,” Tom would tell the farmers. The Turners still couldn’t find employment.

  A few of the farmers they had approached ran them off as if they’d been homeless dogs. Most were sympathetic, however. “I’d like to help, but I don’t have the money to pay you. You come around next year. Maybe 1934 will be better,” one farmer had told them.

  His wife had come outside with a dishpan of water. She threw it on a flower bed, then looked them over. “Why, honey, they ain’t nothing but kids,” she told her husband. “Where’s your folks at, kids?”

  Tom and Hallie didn’t answer. The woman shrugged. “You ain’t the first orphans that’s come around. You sit down and have you a glass of cold buttermilk before you go on. That’s the least we can do.” She turned to her husband. “Folks is one after another coming down that road looking for work. Times is sure hard.” She went inside and returned with a pitcher of buttermilk and three glasses and handed them around. She stared at Benny but didn’t say anything.

  When the three had finished drinking, Hallie rinsed off the glasses at the pump. She set them beside the back porch steps. The woman had gone inside, so Hallie told the man, “We sure are obliged to you.”

  “I wish I could hire you . . . ,” he said.

  “We understand,” Tom told him. He and Hallie and Benny had climbed back into the car and headed for the next farm.

  “We’ll find something. We always do,” Hallie said now as she helped Tom with the boxes. She was right. Just when things seemed hardest, Tom got a half-day’s work for fifty cents. Then they’d found those tomatoes. Until then, they’d been eating pancakes made from flour and water. They’d paid a nickel for a half-dozen eggs to mix with the pancake batter, but Benny had dropped the eggs on the ground, and they’d broken.

  Now she glanced at where Benny sat playing with the boat. “You stay there, Benny. Don’t go off.”

  They had to watch Benny all the time. It wasn’t that he didn’t mind them. He was easily distracted. He would see a bird far off and run to it, calling, “Hi, bird.” Or he’d discover a flower. He’d pick it for Hallie, then spot another one farther away. Whenever he saw a rabbit, he called, “Hi, Bob.” He’d follow it until the rabbit disappeared. Back in Oklahoma, he’d had a pet rabbit named Bob. Now each time he caught sight of a rabbit, he thought it was his friend and would try to catch it.

  Of course, it was hard having to take care of a six-year-old. Hallie and Tom might have been hired more often if they hadn’t had the little boy to take care of. Even as a twelve-year-old, Hallie had had a few offers for work. A woman wanted to pay her a quarter to clean her house. She’d brought Benny with her. The woman had said she wouldn’t allow the boy inside. Hallie couldn’t leave Benny outside by himself. So she’d had to turn down the job. She might have been resentful of Benny, but she wasn’t. She and Tom loved their little brother and protected him fiercely.

  Tom gathered rocks and made a circle. Then he collected wood for a fire. They were careful about camping. When they left a campsite, they always put out the fire. They also returned the rocks to where they’d been. “It’s the least we can do,” Tom said. “We’re trespassing on someone’s land, even if the owners have been dusted out and moved on.”

  The fire Tom built made Hallie even hotter. Of course, they didn’t need the fire to keep warm. They needed it to cook the tomatoes, which were mushy now. At first, Hallie had cut them in half and they’d eaten them with salt. After a few days, they were so soft that they had to be cooked. The night before, she had made a tomato stew, adding chunks of bread to the pot with the stewed tomatoes. The bread was gone. So she mixed up biscuits, using flour, baking powder, water, and a pinch of salt, while she decided what to do with the tomatoes. “How about tomato soup for supper?” she called to Benny.

  “No more tomatoes,” he replied.

  Hallie, too, was tired of tomatoes, but there was nothing else to eat, except for biscuits. Besides, she wouldn’t throw away perfectly good food, even if they were sick of it. She thought a moment, then said, “Then how about red soup, Benny? You like red.”

  “I like red,” he agreed.

  Hallie smiled at the boy while she dumped the last of the tomatoes into an old pot, blackened from use. She smashed them into a pulp with a potato masher. She went to the stream and using a tin can, dipped up water to add to the soup, then set the pot on the fire Tom had built.

  As the soup heated, she spread quilts on top of the mattresses. Her mother had made some of them from patches cut from men’s worn-out jackets and pants. They were as heavy as the iron that Hallie had once heated on the cook stove back in Oklahoma to iron clothes. Sleeping under those quilts was like sleeping under a pile of cast-iron stove lids. They’d been grateful for them in the winter, but they didn’t need their warmth now. The three would sleep on top of them. She set Benny’s pillow on the mattress he shared with Tom. She was glad one of the pillows had survived. Two had blown off the top of the car. They hadn’t known of the loss until they stopped to camp. Hallie went back to the fire. The soup was scorched, and she added more water, then stirred the burned bits into the soup. She made coffee by pouring water into the coffeepot, which held the grounds left over from the day before. They used the grounds three or four times before throwing them out. When all was ready, she called, “Supper!”

  “Oh boy, red soup,” said Tom, who had heard the exchange between his sister and brother.

  “Oh boy,” Benny repeated as he watched Hallie pour the soup into his tin cup.

  He put the cup to his mouth to drink it, but Hallie handed him a spoon. “We use a spoon for soup. We have to mind our manners even when we’re camping,” she said. “And we have to give thanks.”

  “Okay,” Benny told her. He bowed his head while Hallie said grace. Then he ate the soup quickly and said, “Good red soup.”

  Tom and Hallie smiled at each other over the little boy’s head. “It is good red soup,” Tom said.

  “More,” Benny said.

  “That’s all there is.” Hallie handed Benny a biscuit. He took it and stood up and went back to his boat.

  “That’s it?” Tom asked.

  Hallie knew he wanted more, too. He was hungry. He was always hungry. So was she.

  “That’s the last of the tomatoes,” she said. “From now on, it’s back to beans or pancakes.”

  Tom nodded. “There must be a town down the road. I’ll walk there tomorrow and see if I can find a job. You stay here with Benny.”

  “Maybe you can get work at a filling station. Maybe somebody needs a car fixed.” Tom knew everything about cars. That was why he knew that the transmission needed to be replaced. He’d nursed it along for days.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Or maybe not, Hallie thought. She tried to be upbeat with her brothers, but at heart, she worried. It wasn’t fair, the fix they were in. They’d had the worst luck. She felt discouraged sometimes until she realized that others had the worst luck, too. It wasn’t just the dust storms, with farms drying up and blowing away. There was also the depression. Thousands of men all over the country were out of work. Hallie and Tom had driven through Oklahoma City and Kansas City and Topeka and had seen folks in bread lines waiting for free government food. “Should we stop and join them?” Tom asked. After all, they needed the food.

  Hallie wouldn’t let him join the line. “There are others who are needier than us,” she told him. Tom had nodded and driven on. They had had a meager supper that night. Since then, there’d been many suppers like it.

  Hallie hated their situation, but it didn’t do any good to complain. She went to the stream to wash the dishes, then played with Benny and his boat. Tom replaced rocks that had slid down the bank into the water and cleaned out deadwood that clogged the campsite.

  Later Tom jo
ined his brother and sister. “I’ve been looking around. There’s an old cabin over yonder. It looks like nobody’s lived there in a long time. We’re going to be here awhile. Maybe we could move in there.”

  Hallie shook her head. “It doesn’t belong to us.”

  “We’d leave it better than we found it. I was just thinking—”

  “It wouldn’t be right, Tom.”

  Her brother nodded. Although Hallie was four years younger than Tom, when she put her foot down, he didn’t oppose her. Her final argument was always, “It wouldn’t be right.”

  Instead he said, “Maybe I should put up the tent.” He had left the tent on top of the Model T. It was old and worn and filled with rips that Hallie had sewn up. There were so many tears and zigzagged seams that the tent looked like one of the crazy quilts Mommy had made.

  “Why?” Hallie asked. “It’s too hot to sleep in the tent.”

  “We’ll have to be here for a few days. What if it rains?”

  “Rains? If it rains, we’ll all stand outside and praise the Lord. When was the last time you saw rain, Tom?”

  “Let’s see.” Tom tilted his head, thinking. “I think it was in 1929. The Bible says we have seven good years and seven bad, so we should have rain in two or three years.”

  “Well, I hope the Lord can count,” Hallie told him. She stared at her brother until the two burst out laughing. She felt good finding something funny.

  It was dusk now. Benny lay down on one of the quilts. “Are we home, Hallie?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I know, let’s sing a song,” Benny begged.

  “What song, Benny?”

  “The happy song.” They had heard “Happy Days Are Here Again” on the radio at home, and Benny loved it. Often at night around a campfire, the three of them sang “You Are My Sunshine” and “When You Wore a Tulip.” Benny always wanted the happy song before he went to sleep.

  Hallie began singing the words. Tom joined her, pretending he was strumming a guitar. Benny chimed in, making up the words as he went along.

  Suddenly Tom stopped. Hallie looked up at him, then realized her brother was staring at something behind her. She turned and saw a man walking through the black trees toward them, a shotgun in his arms.