Someplace to Call Home

by Sandra Dallas

  “That’s because it came from you,” Hallie said. She collected the tin plates.

  “It’s sensible of you to use tin. Someone is always breaking our china dishes,” Mrs. Carlson said.

  “I do not,” Tessie told her mother.

  “I wasn’t talking about you.” Mrs. Carlson glanced at her husband, who blushed. Then she said, “It was an awful good dinner. I couldn’t eat another thing.”

  “Well, you have to,” Hallie said. She took a plate from the top of the bureau and set it on the table.

  “Divinity candy!” Mr. Carlson said. “Well, will you look at that, Tessie.”

  “Yay!” Tessie said.

  “Yay!” Benny repeated.

  “It is indeed the best Christmas dinner we ever had,” Mrs. Carlson said.

  They hurried to wash the dishes so that they could reach the church before the service started. When they went outside, they discovered that snow was falling, coming down in big flakes like white butterflies. Benny and Tessie raised their faces to the sky, laughing when the flakes landed on them.

  “We should have brought that old sleigh in the barn,” Mr. Carlson said.

  “It holds only three. That means you’d have to make two trips,” his wife said. “Some of us might miss part of the service.”

  That would be all right with me, Hallie thought.

  Hallie had tried going to church. In the fall, she had taken Benny to a service, but she felt out of place. In the middle of a prayer, Benny had pointed to a window with colored glass and said, “I like red.” Worshipers had turned around and stared or frowned, and one man had laughed. Hallie had stayed home after that.

  She wished they could skip the service and go just to the school, but they were with the Carlsons. Besides, Benny was excited to go. He and Tessie ran ahead of them into the church. Mrs. Carlson followed, leading the way to the front. “We always sit here. This is our pew,” she said.

  “We’ll sit in the back,” Hallie told her.

  “Oh, for land sakes. You’ve as much right to sit in front as anyone.”

  Hallie shook her head. “We’d rather be back there,” she said.

  Mrs. Carlson seemed to understand. “I guess we’ll all sit in the back, then.”

  As people came in, they greeted the Carlsons, then glanced at the Turners. “What are you doing way back here?” one woman asked.

  “We’re sitting with our neighbors,” Mrs. Carlson told her. “The squatters?”

  “No, like I said, our neighbors.”

  The woman frowned at her, and Hallie felt like slumping down in her seat. She wished they hadn’t come. Tom, however, stood up and extended his hand. “Hi. I’m Tom Turner. This is my sister, Hallie, and my brother, Benny.”

  “Oh, I seen you at the garage,” the woman’s husband said, shaking Tom’s hand.

  “Good for you,” Mrs. Carlson told Tom after the couple took their seats.

  Other people crowded into the church then. Hallie looked down at her hands after she noticed Wilma and Dorothy. Dan and Harold came in, too. Harold spotted Tom and nudged his friend. Dan raised his hand in greeting, but Harold grabbed it. “Hey, it’s Christmas,” Dan said. Tom nodded at him. Cathy came down the aisle and grinned at Hallie.

  The pews filled quickly, people crowded together against the cold. They kept on their heavy coats, because the stove at the front of the church did not send out much heat. Mr. Carlson had on a warm jacket lined with sheepskin. Hallie was glad she had ordered the winter jacket for Tom. He’d be pleased when he opened his present in the morning.

  The room was noisy. Worshipers greeted each other and shouted, “Merry Christmas!” A woman began playing the piano. The room grew still. When the pianist was finished, the minister stood and greeted everybody. “This is God’s house, and all are welcome here,” he said.

  Hallie glanced around and wondered if she and Tom and Benny were truly welcome.

  The congregation sang “Silent Night.” Then Wilma went to the front of the room and read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible. She stumbled over the words, mispronouncing them. Every now and then, she rubbed her hands on her skirt. Hallie realized Wilma was nervous, just like Hallie was when she had to stand up in front of the class to recite. I’m sorry for you, Wilma, Hallie thought. Now you know what it’s like to have people stare at you.

  The preacher gave a short sermon explaining the meaning of Christmas. Then the congregation sang “Joy to the World.”

  Two men passed around collection plates. Hallie hadn’t thought about an offering and had not brought any money. She hoped nobody would notice. Tom reached into his pocket and took out a nickel. Mr. Carlson slipped a dollar into the plate. He’d folded it up so that nobody would notice the bill. He wasn’t showy like others in the congregation who flashed the dollars they gave. When the collection plate reached Hallie, it wasn’t very full. She saw that some people had given only a penny and she thought a few might have given nothing at all. There were more poor people in the church than rich ones, Hallie realized. She wondered if they were as uncomfortable as she was.

  The minister announced the final hymn. As the pianist started to play, Benny shouted, “Sing ‘Happy Days’!”

  Mrs. Carlson smiled. Mr. Carlson laughed out loud. Hallie turned red and stared straight ahead, wondering if Wilma and Dorothy were looking at her.

  “Yeah, ‘Happy Days,’” Tessie repeated.

  It seemed to Hallie that everyone in the congregation turned to stare at them. One man grinned at Benny, but a few glared. One woman looked at the Turners for a moment and then shook her head.

  The minister was among those who smiled. “As the Bible tells us, a little child shall lead them,” he said. “Yes, son, these are happy days when we come together to praise the Lord on His birthday. But I think we’ll sing ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ instead.”

  “Okay,” Benny said.

  When the song was over, the congregation hurried through the snow to the school next door. Tom and Benny went with the Carlsons to the room where refreshments were being served. Hallie found Cathy, and the two went to their classroom. Presents with the students’ names on them were piled on the teacher’s desk. They had been brought the day before. When everyone was there, Mrs. Powell handed out the gifts, and the students unwrapped them. Hallie watched as Dorothy opened her present and said, “Wow. I love yellow. Thanks whoever made this!” Dorothy looked around until she saw Cathy smiling at her. The presents were anonymous, but the students seemed to figure out who they were from anyway.

  Then Mildred opened her present and frowned. “I don’t like hankies. I wonder who gave it to me.” Hallie ducked her head. When she looked up, Mildred was staring at her.

  Cathy had already opened her present—a bright blue hair ribbon. Now Hallie tore off the paper on her gift and found a yellow pencil.

  “That’s nice,” Cathy said. “Somebody must like you.”

  Hallie didn’t respond. She noticed that two other children had yellow pencils, too. She knew who had bought them—Mrs. Powell. Hallie had seen the pencils on the teacher’s desk the day before. Mrs. Powell had bought several of them. They were for students who didn’t receive presents. Someone had drawn Hallie’s name and was too mean to bring her a gift. She wondered if it had been Wilma.

  chapter eleven

  Harold

  Winter was difficult for everyone.

  One day after school started in January, Hallie made an extra bean sandwich to give to Jimmy. Mrs. Carlson had shared a batch of cookies, so Hallie put two of them into her sugar sack for Jimmy and his brother. Jimmy had become her friend. Once, after Mrs. Powell held up her history test and announced Hallie had gotten a hundred on it, a boy had said, “Smarty-pants.”

  “Aw, shut up,” Jimmy had told him. “She’s all right.” Mrs. Powell smiled at that.

  Jimmy wasn’t in school now, and Hallie wondered why. She hadn’t seen him for a week. “Where’s Jimmy? Is he sick?” she asked Cathy.
/>   “He quit.”

  “Quit! Why?” Hallie was stunned. Jimmy was only a few months away from graduating from eighth grade.

  “His dad made him quit. He said Jimmy needed to get a job to help support his family.”

  “But it’s winter. Who hires in winter? Who hires the rest of the year, for that matter?”

  Cathy shrugged. “His father doesn’t care about school.”

  Hallie felt bad about Jimmy. She told him so one afternoon when she ran into him at the gas station. He was asking Mr. Ulman about a job, but the man had said he wasn’t hiring.

  “I’m sorry you had to leave school,” Hallie said.

  Jimmy shrugged. His shoulders slumped, he started to walk away.

  “I could help you,” she said suddenly. “I can’t go to school every day because I have to take care of my brother. Mrs. Powell gives me lessons ahead of time. You could ask her for your lessons, and I’ll help you with them. We can go over them together. I bet if we did that, you could graduate.”

  Jimmy stared at her. Then he shook his head. “You don’t get it, Hallie. Pa doesn’t care if I finish school. He thinks school is a waste of time.”

  The Turners found the winter especially hard. Hallie worried about where money would come from. Mr. Carlson didn’t need Tom’s help anymore. He said he was sorry. He knew Tom needed the money, but he couldn’t afford to pay him for doing nothing. Tom went around to the other farms, hoping he’d have better luck. He didn’t.

  “I’d like to hire you. Swede Carlson put in a good word for you,” one farmer told him. “Things are hard for me, too. I can’t even pay myself.”

  Work slacked off at the garage. Since it was winter, the farmers weren’t bringing in their machinery to be repaired. Often when Tom went to work, Mr. Ulman told him he wasn’t needed that day.

  The Turners weren’t going hungry, but their meals were lighter. Sometimes they ate only pancakes or bean soup or corn bread with sorghum molasses for supper. From time to time, Mr. Carlson gave them a ham from the smokehouse or Mrs. Carlson sent loaves of bread. There were only a few scoops of sugar left in the sugar sack, but Hallie wouldn’t spend their dwindling cash for another bag of it. She wondered sometimes if for Benny’s sake, they should have moved in with the Carlsons. But the decision had been the right one. Perhaps the Carlsons thought so, too. They were friendly and generous, but they didn’t interfere. They let Tom and Hallie live their own lives.

  “No beans. Cake,” Benny said one evening when Hallie served bean soup for the third day in a row.

  “I’m sorry, Benny. There’s no cake,” she said.

  “No more beans,” he told her.

  That afternoon, Hallie had searched the woods for ferns or even young thistles that they could eat. It was still winter and too early for them. She gave Benny the choice of bean soup again or pancakes.

  The little money Tom earned at the garage now went for food. There was nothing left over for anything else. Hallie no longer bought kerosene for the lamp. She was frugal with what was left of the kerosene, and the Turners went to bed when it grew dark. There was no money for shoes, either. Hallie’s shoes pinched her toes, and the soles had so many holes in them that she had to replace the cardboard inserts every few days. She was always on the lookout for discarded cardboard.

  “Maybe we should have gone to California after all,” Hallie said one night. She had opened the purse where they kept their money and spread it on the table. There were nickels and dimes and pennies but only a single dollar bill. “We don’t have any more money now than when we came.”

  “We might have, if we’d moved in with the Carlsons,” Tom shot back at her. He softened. “At least in Kansas we have a place to live.”

  “I like Kansas,” Benny said.

  “So do I,” Tom agreed. “I like it pretty well, but I’ve got to find more work.”

  “At least you’ve got a job at the garage,” Hallie said.

  Harold seemed to use any excuse to torment the Turners. A few people had begun to accept them, but not Harold. One day, outside the filling station, Harold aimed his car at Benny, then swerved at the last minute.

  “Bad boy,” Benny called.

  Harold pulled to a stop. “Who you calling bad boy?” he asked.

  “You!” Benny shouted.

  “You’re that stupid kid.”

  “Don’t say ‘stupid.’”

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “Stop!” Benny cried, covering his ears.

  “Forget it, Harold. Stop picking on the kid,” Dan said.

  Benny had been by himself outside the filling station. Hallie heard the yelling and rushed out of the office to Benny’s side. “What’s wrong?” she asked her brother. She glared at Harold.

  “He said ‘stupid,’” Benny told her.

  “He’s just talking about himself.”

  “You can’t say that.” Harold opened the car door and started toward Hallie.

  “Hey,” Tom said. He’d been working on a car. He came out of the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. He looked from Hallie to Harold. “Keep away from her!”

  “You think you can stop me?”

  “If I have to.” Tom made a fist with his right hand.

  “Don’t, Tom. I’m all right,” Hallie told him.

  Tom lowered his hand. “You’re right. He’s just a creep.”

  “You can’t call me a creep,” Harold yelled. He spun around and hit Tom in the face.

  Tom glared at him but didn’t hit back.

  “What’s the matter? You a coward?” Harold yelled.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” Tom said.

  “Seems like you don’t have a choice,” Harold told him. He moved in and began hitting Tom.

  Tom tried to protect himself, but Harold was right. He didn’t have a choice. Tom struck out and landed a punch that sent Harold sprawling.

  “You broke my nose, you dumb squatter,” Harold said, starting to get back up.

  A woman called out, “Stop it! Stop it right now.”

  Hallie had been clutching Benny, who was terrified. She now turned to see Mrs. Powell standing with a group of people. They’d seen the fight.

  “He started it,” Harold said, getting to his feet. “I was just defending myself.”

  “No such thing. I saw you hit him first,” the teacher said. “Now you boys shake hands.”

  Tom slowly held out his hand.

  Harold stared at Tom, until Dan said, “Come on and shake. It won’t hurt you.”

  “Shut up,” Harold told him, and he walked away from Tom. He got back into the car, then turned and called out, “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Dan said. Harold sneered at Tom, then started the engine and drove off.

  “I hope that’s the end of it,” Hallie said as she brushed dirt off Tom.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Tom told her.

  Hallie knew he was right.

  A few days later, Tom was working at the garage when Harold and Dan drove in for gasoline. Mr. Ulman was working on a car. He told Tom to pump the gas into Harold’s automobile. “Be careful. I hear those boys are on the warpath,” he said.

  Tom glanced at Hallie, who was sitting on a bench in front of the station. She had stopped on her way from school to walk home with Tom. Harold, Dan beside him, ignored her. In fact, Hallie wondered if they’d even noticed her. She stared at the car. One fender was smashed, a headlight was gone, and there were scratches on the doors. The car was covered with dirt and grime, too. You’re not much of a driver, she thought.

  “Hey, boy, see if you can fill the tank without spilling the gas,” Harold called.

  Tom didn’t reply. He removed the gas cap and took down the hose and stood beside the car while the gasoline splashed into the tank. When the tank was full, Tom replaced the gas cap and hose. He washed the car windows. Then he went to the driver’s side of the Terraplane and said, “That’ll be seventy-six cents.”
/>   Harold pulled out his billfold and handed Tom a bill. “Don’t forget the change,” he called after Tom.

  When Tom went inside to the cash drawer, Hallie overheard Harold tell Dan, “Watch this. I’ll get that dumb squatter.”

  Tom returned and counted out two dimes and four pennies. “Here’s your change,” he said, handing it to Harold.

  Harold looked at the money. “Like heck it is!” he said. “I gave you a five-dollar bill. Where’s the rest of it?”

  “You gave me a dollar.”

  “You trying to cheat me?”

  “No, sir.”

  Hallie winced, hearing Tom call Harold “sir.”

  “Then go back and get the rest of my money.”

  “You gave me a dollar.”

  “You better go inside and check. I gave you a fiver.”

  Tom swallowed hard and went back inside to the cash drawer. When he returned, he said, “There’s no five-dollar bill in there.”

  “Hey, Mr. Ulman,” Harold called. “Your boy here shorted me four dollars.”

  Mr. Ulman pushed himself out from under a car and stood. He wiped his greasy hands on his overalls. “What’s the problem here?” he asked.

  “I gave that squatter a fiver. He said it was a one. He owes me four dollars.”

  Mr. Ulman turned to Tom. “Is that right?”

  “No, sir. I went back and checked. There’s no five-dollar bill in the cash drawer.”

  “Then he must have put it in his pocket. Turn out your pockets, boy,” Harold said.

  Mr. Ulman held up his hand to Tom. “No need for that.” He stared at the two boys in the car for a long time. “If Tom here says you gave him a one, then you gave him a one. I believe him. Now you boys go on about your business and stop trying to cause trouble.”

  “He’s the one causing the trouble. This isn’t the end of it,” Harold said, starting the car. He drove off at a high speed, barely missing a dog in the middle of the road.

  Mr. Ulman watched them go. “That Harold is a troublemaker. You watch yourself. They’re up to no good.”