Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Sometimes, last year, I’d catch sight of my own reflection in the shiny surface of the counter as I stood serving, or in a mirror at the Bean Pot, but then it was only for an instant, just time to say hello to myself, not even long enough to think about it. Now there was time for a long stare. I saw how long my neck looked above my shoulders, how my hand around the fork handle looked strong enough to hold a grain shovel. The pink sweater I had bought in Dayton’s college shop last year had been washed too many times. I looked dull. “You look so quiet, but so alive,” Gil had said once. He wouldn’t say that now.
I tried to go on eating, lifting my cup of tea to my lips, but my eyes would find themselves in the mirror. I wasn’t hungry. The food was tasteless. My cans stacked along the wall looked like a grocery store. I picked up my plate and went out to scrape it into the garbage can. I put my dishes in the oven and closed the door on them, and went out of the teacherage.
At six-thirty it was dark. The long light nights of summer were over. The top edge of the butte was hidden in darkness, but there would be a moon tonight. The patent-medicine calendar on the wall of the schoolroom said so: three-quarters full. I walked fast at first, away from the butte this time, toward the south. I would stop at whatever house I came to. I had been here five weeks and already I craved people, grown people.
The stars seemed to come out between one step and another. I couldn’t see them blink on like street lights, but as suddenly they were there. They seemed to lie just above the rimrock. I climbed toward them, wishing I were climbing the rimrock at home. When I reached the top the moon was up. I could look down on the school sitting there like a doll’s house in the center of the flat ground. The flagpole stood out clearly.
I walked along the rimrock a long way, until a ranch house lay below me, and the long squat roof of a sheep shed. There was a light in the house. I ran down from the rimrock almost eagerly. Once I saw two red eyes that I suppose belonged to a jack rabbit.
A dog barked when I came near the gate. The door opened and a woman’s voice called out, “Be quiet, Shep!” She lingered there against the oblong of light and I could see that she was small and bent. “Is someone there?” she called.
“Yes,” I called back. “How do you do?” I went rapidly up the plank walk to the log house. “I’m the new teacher at the Prairie Butte teacherage.”
“Come in. I’m Mrs. Mathew Harper. I was going to send some fresh bread over by Leslie tomorrow. You can take it now for yourself. It didn’t turn out as good as it used to.”
“I wondered if this wasn’t where Leslie lived. You’re his grandmother?”
“Yes, and mother too, poor boy.”
“Leslie told me his mother was dead,” I said.
“Dead!” Mrs. Harper gave a kind of snort and went on in a half-resentful tone. “Yes, she is dead and you hadn’t ought to talk about the dead, but I think about her and just boil up inside. She went off when Leslie was three, got a ‘call’ is what she said, to traipse around the country holding religious meetings. It’s a queer religion, I say, that calls a woman to leave her own flesh and blood. She’d keep coming back, all dressed-up, and bringing a load of Bibles and books and tracts and then just when Warren’d begin to think she’d settled down, she’d go again. Fin’lly, Warren went and hunted her up in Los Angeles and she was living with the religious preacher that traveled with her. Warren never mentioned her again, and he told Leslie she was dead, as she was a year later. Here, sit down there where you’ll be comfortable. Leslie’ll be real glad to see you.”
The room was like rooms I’ve always known. Folks on ranches usually buy out of the same mail-order catalogues, but it was different, too. There was a kind of crowded disorder about it. The window sill was piled up with mending. Wood was stacked under the kitchen table and back of the stove. The dishes must have come from dinner and supper both.
“Leslie says you come from Minneapolis?”
“I was there last winter, but I come from Gotham, Montana,” I said. “You were just doing the dishes. May I help?”
“Oh, don’t bother. I don’t make any fuss.” As though she was glad to be reminded of what she had been doing, she went back to the sink and picked up her dishcloth. It was too dark over by the sink to see.
“Can I move this lamp over for you?” I asked.
“Father does that for me when he’s home. I don’t like to move it, I’m so unsteady with my hands.”
With the light nearer, I saw how old Mrs. Harper was. Her left hand was knotted up with rheumatism so that she could only use it to hold the dish while she washed it with the other. She was too old to keep things in order. They piled up on her. She was too old to have to raise a grandson.
“How long has Leslie lived with you?” I asked.
“His father brought him here in April. Leslie’s a nervous kind of child. His father thought he’d be better off back here.”
Maybe it was the light on the shelf above the sink shining down on her face that gave it such a worried look, or maybe I was used to Mom’s calm face. She went on talking without my saying anything.
“Warren was a bright boy. I was telling Leslie today I could remember how proud he was when he won the 4H award for raising the best buck, and he did real well at college.” Mrs. Harper sloshed the dishcloth over the plates while she talked. She didn’t get them clean. I don’t think she could see well enough. Her mind was on her son, anyway.
“He got a job the second summer on a boat that went to South America. We didn’t want him to go, but, land, he’d have run away if we’d said no, and wool was selling so low and there wasn’t anything here on the ranch that summer, so he went. Seems like he never settled down again after that. I knew when he came back from college next year with a picture of a girl that he’d decided to marry her. He did, the end of his junior year. But we didn’t say anything. Mathew said there wasn’t any use.”
I took the teakettle from the stove to rinse the dishes, but it was empty. I didn’t want to interrupt to ask where the water was.
“I could tell from the girl’s picture she wouldn’t do on a ranch. But you wouldn’t think to look at her she’d take up with a new religion, either. I forget what they call it. I haven’t any use for it, anyway.
“And I never seen such a change in a man as Warren. He stayed in Detroit for six months after he got the wire saying she was dead. I guess he drank some. I’m not excusing him any. He worked hard—Warren always was a good worker—but he looked tired and old enough to be fifty when he drove into the yard last April, and he’s only twenty-seven.”
“Tell me where these go and I’ll put them away,” I said.
“Oh, just put them there on the table. I don’t fuss.”
I was glad to hear Leslie’s voice outside.
“Hello, Leslie,” I said. “I’ve been visiting with your grandmother.”
The little boy nodded and smiled. He came over toward me. “Grandfather and I went to fill the water barrels.”
“Here, I was forgetting about the bread!”
Mrs. Harper brought a loaf from a crock and began wrapping it awkwardly in a towel. Mr. Harper came in with a dog at his heels that seemed too big and wild for him.
“Mathew, this is Miss . . .” Mrs. Harper looked at me blankly.
“Webb, Ellen Webb. We met the first day of school.”
Mr. Harper nodded, but I don’t think he really remembered me. He was smaller than I, and very frail. I noticed how his eyelids made little peaks above his eyes. His ragged jeans were dirty and he had an old black suit coat that was spotted down the front, but all the same he looked clean. Maybe it was his white hair against his pink skin.
“I’ll walk part way home with you, Miss Webb,” Leslie said. I looked at Mrs. Harper, but she was too busy trying to tie a string around the bread to hear.
“Not very far. It’s getting late,” I said.
Mr. Harper sat down in the chair and began taking off his bo
ots.
“That school’s got a good roof on it. We put the new shingles right over the old ones,” he said, showing me with his heavily veined hands just how it was done.
“I’m glad of that,” I said.
When Leslie and I came out of the house it was bright moonlight. I held out my hand to him. “Let’s run a ways. I love to run in the moonlight.”
Leslie looked at me a minute, then he grinned and took my hand. Running across the hard bare ground, we could see our shadows running with us. The dog’s shadow looked like a bear’s. I waved my hand in the air and my shadow gestured comically back. Leslie’s high, little-boy laughter sounded shrill in that empty place. The dog barked and started echoes way against the reef.
“I think you better go back by the road so you won’t get lost after I leave you, Miss Webb,” Leslie said soberly. We left off running and went over to the dry, rutted road.
“Do you get scared alone at night?” he asked when we had walked a way.
“No, not scared. I get lonely sometimes.”
“I get scared, but not with you and Shep. Would you like to take Shep home with you tonight, Miss Webb?” he asked.
“Oh, no. But if you hear of a puppy, I’m looking for one.”
“There’re just old dogs around here,” he said sadly.
I promised I’d watch him after he left me until he was out of sight. He’d run a little way and then turn to see if I was still there, and wave. In the bright moonlight I could see him a long distance.
I came around the bend in the road and saw the school standing out square and squat on the plain. I ran the rest of the way, partly because of the moonlight, partly to shake off the feeling of the Harpers’ house. I would feel old, too, if I stayed there long.
When I lit my lamp and drew the shades my room had a friendly feeling. I liked it for the first time. I moved around feeling natural. I could hum without having the sound stay in the silence. While I undressed I planned out my days: tomorrow I would do some French. Every day I would do some extra work. Sitting on the bed, I looked across at the cans piled against the wall. Why should I wake up every morning staring at beans and soup and canned corn? I went out to the shed and got some cartons to put them in and shoved them under my bed. Then I took red crayon and marked the contents on the box ends.
I put on my coat over my pyjamas and went across to the cistern to get two pails of water. I set them on the stove to heat and dragged out the tin washtub I used for bathing. I had to sit in the tub with my knees almost under my chin, but the hot water was delicious. I made white gloves on my hands and up my arms with the soap, like a child, then I dipped them under the water and watched the soap slide off the smooth skin. My arms, still tanned from summer, looked dark against the white pinkness of my thighs. When I stepped out on the towel I could feel the warmth from the stove and I turned around to feel it on my back and rubbed until I glowed. I unpinned my hair and let it flop softly down on my shoulders. I felt so warm and clothed in my own skin that for a minute I hated to put on my pyjamas. I thought of old Mrs. Harper, and I had a sudden greedy joy in my young, strong body.
It was midnight before I was through with my bath and had the light out. I ran the shades way up and opened the windows. It wasn’t really cold, but the air was as clear as ice water. The moonlight was so bright I could see the pattern of the calico on the patchwork squares of my quilt. I didn’t mind being alone here any more.
Since I had been in love with Gil I hadn’t ever been quite alone. And all summer I had felt so weighed down with Dad and Mom. Now I was free and alone in myself. It was the only way to feel. I wouldn’t ever let anybody matter so much to me again. I wouldn’t let myself need anybody that way. Dad and Mom had made their own lives and I was separate from them. I was free from Gil now, too—I hardly ever thought of him, I told myself.
It was snowing when I woke in the morning, and I could see my breath in the air. There were two inches of snow on the floor by the window and the top of the stove was covered. The snow came pouring down like wheat emptying out of the truck at the elevator. Prairie Butte was hidden as completely as the faraway Main Range.
4
SUNDAY forenoon Mom and Dad came. I was sitting by the window translating Cyrano de Bergerac as hard as though I had a class next hour. My airtight stove was roaring like a furnace and I had the door shut into the schoolroom. Nothing had gone past the window all morning but a sheepherder driving his sheep up over the rimrock. He had his head bent against the wind and his chin down in his coat collar. The sheep kept close together and moved in a gray wall. He went past without seeming to look at the teacherage at all, and yet he must have faced it all the way across from the highway. There was a kind of secretive look about him as though he wanted to be let alone, the look I’d seen on a deer that came down in the wheat field one time. If he had looked up once toward the window I would have called to him. When he had passed, the place seemed more lonely than before.
It was about eleven when I saw the truck coming through the snow. I knew by the blanket tied over the radiator that it was ours. Mom always covered the radiator in cold weather. I ran out to meet them.
“Well, Karmont, I had to come and see where you are,” Dad said.
“Yeléna,” Mom said very low, and hugged me as though I were a child. How could I ever have thought I could be separate from them?
“They couldn’t have found a much more God-forsaken spot to put a teacherage on!” Dad grumbled.
“How are you, Dad? Is your leg all well?” He looked pale to me beside Mom.
“Yes, but he has a cold. I told him I come alone, but he won’t hear. He is stubborn like a pig.” Mom scowled when she talked.
“We miss you, Ellen,” Dad said, paying no attention to her. We were standing out in front of the school, hardly knowing we were still outside. I can’t tell the gladness there was in me.
Mom approved of the schoolroom. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her looking at the floor. I was glad I’d washed it this morning and put the border of turkeys on the blackboard in colored chalks. Mom nodded her head.
Dad didn’t think so much of it. “How far would you have to go for help?” he asked, looking out the window.
“About two miles, to Harpers’ place,” I said.
“Why would she need help?” Mom grumbled.
“Sit down, Mom, and take off your coat.” She had been too busy looking. Now she took off the bandanna she wore tied under her chin because of the cold. Then she thought of something.
“Ben, go bring it.”
“How did you ever happen to start out a day like this?” I asked.
Mom shrugged. “We plan yesterday, before it get so cold, to come today. The cold don’t hurt nothing.”
I laughed; it was so good to hear Mom again.
“Mom, I like it here now. I hated it at first, but I don’t mind it any more.”
Mom’s eyes can get brighter while she looks at you. They did now, but she only said:
“You got it good here. Where you put your canned stuff?”
And then Dad came in loaded down. He gave me a box and I knew when I felt the weight of it that it was a radio.
“If you ever needed one you need it here in this place,” Dad said. “Let’s see if it’s any good.”
“It came yesterday. Your Dad was crazy to start right out,” Mom said.
Dad set it up, but the static was bad. I thought of the first few days when I had been afraid to make any noise. I was glad they hadn’t come before, until I was all right alone. Then Dad went back out to the truck for the food they had brought.
“Mom, I can’t eat it all!” I shrieked.
“In this cold will keep all right.”
“You killed a turkey, Mom!”
“There’s one less to run away. She’s been out hunting them till the Bardiches complained she keeps them awake.” It was Dad’s old joke. He always insisted that the Bardiches did nothing but sleep once their crop was in.
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Mom was lighting the burner on the oil stove under a kettle she’d brought from home. I knew without asking; it was borsch, Mom’s beet soup.
“Oh, Mom!”
“I bet you’re sick of them canned soups, eh, Yólochka?”
“She won’t get the smell out of the school for a week. When your children ask what it is, you tell them they’re going to school in Russia now!” Dad teased.
“And cranberry sauce, Mom!” That was one of Dad’s favorites.
My room was too small. We spread a napkin over my big desk in the schoolroom and used it for a table. The rows of desks stood around us like astonished children. By now I thought of them almost as being the children who sat in them.
“There’s one my size,” Dad said. “Who sits there?”
“Oh, that’s Robert’s. He’s not quite bright but he’s . . . he’s not bad,” I said. It seemed a long time since that first day when I had almost fled from him. I told Dad and Mom about one after another. I told them about Leslie crying at the story of Bluebeard.
Dad looked out the window. A fine soft snow was coming down steadily.
“I know how he feels,” Dad said. “It’s the loneliest damn country in the world.”
Silence spread between us; we all three sat staring out the window. I looked at Mom. She was holding a turkey drumstick in her hand. Her face was closed. I think she liked the country because it was like Russia.
“We better start back, soon as we do the dishes,” she said. “It’s dark quick, now.”
“Oh, I’ll do the dishes. You go ahead. You ought to stay here all night.”
“Because of that little storm!” Dad scoffed.
“We make it all right,” Mom said.
When I saw the truck drive off into the snow it was all I could do to keep from running after it. I lighted the lamp and began picking up the dishes. Then I turned my radio on. The static was like the sound of a machine gun, but the dance music filled the emptiness. If the sheepherder passed by now, he’d have to look this way, I thought. It must be funny to have so much music and noise suddenly bursting out in the snow. I ran outdoors to see how it sounded. In the dusk the snow hid the teacherage from sight and the clatter of the radio seemed to come from nowhere.
Winter Wheat Page 19
