Pa beamed at Ma. She smiled and urged Mr. Brummel to sit. “You must have a bowl of raspberries and cream,” she invited. She scurried across the kitchen for another bowl. “One month early but the baby is fine. And he is named after his grandpa! We have much to celebrate.”
“I’m an aunt!” Violet suddenly cried.
“Me too!” Esther said. She turned to Walter. “And you’re an uncle.”
He laughed. “I’m not an uncle. I’m a boy.”
But she explained, and she knew he finally understood when his mouth fell open. “I’m Uncle Walter,” he crowed, and everyone laughed.
That night, Esther lay awake in bed for a long time. It had been such a special day, she wanted to press the happy memories firmly into her mind so she’d never forget.
If only she could shake off the sad feeling that came whenever she thought about disobeying Ma. Esther had always tried hard to please Ma and to be good, but here she was doing something Ma had strictly forbidden! She had barely been able to eat her raspberries after supper. Each one was like a pebble of guilt added to the heavy pile already inside her.
“Nu, Esther, are you not well?” Ma had asked. “Did so much sun make you sick?” She had frowned in worry.
“No, Ma, I’m fine,” Esther had told her. “I ate a lot of berries while I was picking, though.” That much at least was true. If only everything could be true. If only life today could be as simple as it had been a week ago, when Esther had no secrets.
The last thing she heard before she drifted off to sleep was a gentle drumming on the roof. It took Esther a few moments to realize what it was. Then she smiled. It was raining at last.
9 Harvest Time
AUGUST MARKED THE BEGINNING OF THE harvest. There was no time to write long grumbly letters. There was no time for picnics. There was little time even to play with Mickey and Margaret.
Suppers were late so they could all work longer. Pa usually fell asleep in his rocker reading the day-old copy of the Wisconsin State Journal he got for free at the dairy. Walter sometimes fell asleep right at the table. And Esther and Violet were yawning long before they finished washing the dishes. Ma, her knitting needles clicking, was always the last one to bed. She was making mittens and scarves and wool stockings. Just looking at them made Esther feel hotter than ever. Winter seemed very far away.
Esther and Violet spent much of each day working in Ma’s vegetable garden. The crops in the fields had suffered from the lack of rain. But thanks to the well, the garden had thrived.
All summer Ma had carried heavy buckets of water from the well to soak the dry ground. Now tomatoes, cabbages, beets, carrots, onions, cucumbers, beans, and green peppers were all ripening at once. Every day the girls picked the ripest ones and carried them indoors. Ma boiled them in big pots of water and stored them in glass jars. She pickled the cucumbers and some of the beets and onions and stored those in glass jars, too. It was hot, hot work, but it meant they would have vegetables even in the winter.
When the vegetable garden began to slow down, the grapes in the arbor were ripe. And the plum trees were heavy with fruit. The girls picked fruit until their arms ached. Ma filled jar after jar with jams and jellies. And one day, for a treat, she made fry cakes.
Esther loved fry cakes. It was fun to watch Ma drop big spoonfuls of the dough into bubbling hot oil and to watch the dough puff up into airy cakes. When they were golden brown, Ma rolled them in sugar. Just before they were to be eaten, she sliced them and filled them with jelly. Yum! Esther ate so many, Ma said she’d be sick, and she was a little. But it was worth it.
Meanwhile, the threshers Pa hired came to harvest the oats and the wheat with their big machine. Pa was disappointed. There were not nearly so many bushels as he’d hoped. It had been too dry. His hopes were all pinned on the corn and potato crops now. Nothing must go wrong with them.
School started again right after Labor Day. Now Esther could see Bethany every day without looking over her shoulder, watching for Ma. But happy as Esther was to be back in school again, and to have so much more time with Bethany, her guilt at deceiving Ma was always with her. Like her own little cloud, it cast a small shadow over even her brightest days.
Sometimes Esther would be playing with Bethany and she’d suddenly imagine Ma had come up behind her. She’d see the shock on Ma’s face that Esther had disobeyed her, and she would vow to tell Bethany the truth. But when she looked into Bethany’s smiling face, the words stuck in her throat. She could not tell her friend that Ma thought she was marked and dangerous. She could not.
Sometimes it made Esther angry that she felt guilty all the time. Angry with Ma for thinking Bethany’s mole was a sign. Angry with Pa for not telling Ma she was wrong this time. Even angry with Bethany—for being too nice to hurt, and for having that darned old mole to begin with. But mostly Esther was angry with herself, because she couldn’t find a way out of the lie that would not hurt someone.
That year, Walter was in first grade and Miss Larson was his teacher. But Esther and Bethany had moved up to fifth grade, so they were in Violet’s room. Their teacher was Mrs. Davies.
“She’s not as young and pretty as Miss Larson,” Esther had observed to Bethany on the first day of school. “But she’s awfully nice. I think I’ll like her all right, don’t you?”
Bethany nodded. “She puts on a play every year, too. Now we’ll be able to be in it with the rest of the big kids.”
Esther’s heart gave a little hop. A play! She’d always wanted to be in a play. “When is it?” she asked eagerly.
“The play’s not until spring, but we’ll start working on it right after the New Year. Hannah Peterson told me it was the most fun she ever had,” Bethany reported. “They make all the scenery and everything!”
Esther didn’t need any convincing. She was sure being in a play would be the most wonderful thing ever. If only winter weren’t so far away!
September slipped past in a warm, green haze. October arrived dressed in vivid oranges, reds, and golds. Esther couldn’t remember ever seeing leaves as bright as the ones she saw that fall. Every morning she stood for a few moments on the porch to look at the maples and elms that skirted the house. And every morning they were more beautiful. The maples turned fiery red. The elms turned bronze and gold—so gold, they seemed to glow.
“It’s almost like magic,” Esther whispered to Mickey. “I half expect to see fairies dancing on the branches.”
One morning when Esther and Violet arrived in their classroom, all the children were talking about the Nielson twins. Neither boy was present, but their cousin, an eighth-grade girl named Katrina, announced that they were moving.
“Uncle’s crops were poor again this year,” she explained. “He can’t pay what he owes, so the bank is auctioning off their farm on Saturday.”
“But what will happen to Wes and Thomas?” Esther asked.
Katrina shrugged. “I don’t know. Uncle is talking about moving to Madison or Milwaukee. But farming is the only work he knows.”
The news weighed on Esther’s heart for the rest of the day. Listening to Walter’s class say the letters of the alphabet lifted her spirits some. But when she came back to her classroom and saw the twins’ empty desks, her sadness returned.
That night, before he got up from the table after supper, Pa told Ma about the auction. “Brummel told me when I ran into him at the dairy this morning,” he said. “It is sad, sad news.”
“I’m glad that could never happen to us,” Esther said. “We’ll live here forever!”
Pa’s forehead wrinkled. “We have a mortgage, too, Liebling,” he said gently. “Another summer like this one and who knows? The auction could be here.”
“But I thought we owned the farm,” she protested.
“Not completely,” Pa explained. “We used our savings to pay for part of it. But the rest is a loan from the bank—
that’s the mortgage. If the mortgage is not paid back, the bank takes back the land and sells it to someone else.”
Esther slumped in her chair. First there was the rain to worry about, and now this. Wasn’t life ever certain? Wasn’t anything forever?
When the dishes were washed, Pa brought out the checkerboard. Violet and Walter scooted over to grab chairs. With most of the crops harvested, Pa’s labors had eased a little. More and more often he played checkers or rummy in the evening. But that night Esther was not in a mood for games.
She went out and sat on the porch steps. Mickey padded over. He lay down beside her and rested his head in her lap. She stroked his velvety ears and looked out at the farm. The sun was just setting over the harvested wheat field. Esther’s heart swelled at the purple and gold beauty of it.
She had never really noticed sunsets in Chicago. She had never eaten berries she’d picked herself. She’d never eaten vegetables she’d helped to grow. She’d never sat on her very own porch with her very own dog. She had never felt such a tie to anyplace as she felt to the farm.
“I don’t ever want to leave, Mickey.” She gulped. “Not ever. Not even if we never get a bathroom in the house.”
Mickey’s tail thumped against the floorboards. She knew that meant he understood. It meant he didn’t ever want her to leave, either.
All that week Esther thought hard. She wanted to find a way to help pay the mortgage. Then they could stay on the farm forever. And then Ma would see that she could do something important for the family. Surely she would be impressed by that. But what could Esther do? In Little Women, Jo had sold her hair to help her family. But Esther’s hair was not long enough to sell. And she wouldn’t know where to take it if it was. Still, there had to be something she could do.
• • •
On Friday after school, Esther got an idea. The hazelnut and walnut trees behind the farmhouse were full of nuts. She’d gather the ones that had fallen on the ground and sell them at the roadside on Saturday. Excited, she rummaged in the barn until she found an old wooden crate.
“Can I use this, Pa?”
Pa looked up from the harness he was cleaning. He nodded. “What will you use it for?”
Esther smiled. “It’s a surprise. Do you have any paint?”
“Just a few drops of black.” He gestured to a small can on the shelf.
He was right. There wasn’t much. But Esther didn’t need much. She swirled a brush around the inside of the can to get every last bit of paint. She was just able to write NUTS 5c before it ran out. Then she took two empty feed sacks and ran out back. Nuts were thick on the four trees. But they were thick on the ground, too, and much handier. Squirrels ran away and scolded when Esther scooped up the nuts and dropped them into a sack.
“You can climb the trees,” she scolded back. “Don’t be so lazy.”
It was suppertime before she quit and dragged both sacks to the back porch. Ma had just come outside to call her. She blinked at Esther and the sacks in surprise. “Nu, what have you been up to?”
“I’ve been gathering nuts,” Esther told her proudly. “I’m going to sell them along the road tomorrow. The money will help pay the mortgage.”
She held her breath and waited for Ma’s reaction. Would she laugh? Would she shake her head and say it was a waste of time? Or would she tell Esther she was a genius, and that she loved her with all her heart?
Ma did neither of those things. She nodded and said, “A good idea.” Then she smiled down at Esther and said it again. “A good idea.”
Esther was chilled from being outdoors for so long. But Ma’s words warmed her better than any fire, from the inside out. She smiled back at Ma and followed her into the house.
After supper, Ma gave Esther a stack of old newspapers. She showed her how to make cones from the paper. The cones could be filled with nuts and then twisted shut on top. “Just be sure to mark the walnut bags with a W or you will not know which are which,” Ma cautioned her. She even gave Esther a stub of pencil for the job.
Esther was overjoyed. Ma was really noticing her! And she was proud of what Esther was trying to do. Esther could see it in her eyes. Just wait until I hand her and Pa a pile of money tomorrow, Esther thought. She’ll hug me then for sure, just like Mrs. Rubinstein hugged Shirley.
The next morning, right after breakfast, Esther lugged the crate out to the roadside. It was heavy now that it was stuffed with bags of nuts. Esther thought about asking Violet, or even Walter, to help her carry it. But then they might feel they had some claim to the glory when she handed the money over later. No. It was better to stagger and pant and stumble.
At the roadside Esther emptied the crate, sorting the paper bundles into two piles, ones marked with a W and ones that were not. Then she turned the crate on end so drivers could read the sign she’d painted. There would be lots of cars and wagons passing soon. On Saturdays many families went to town for supplies. Her nuts would make a tempting treat to buy along the way. Esther patted her lucky birthday hair ribbon and perched on the bottom rail of the fence to wait.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before cars began to rumble past. But they weren’t the farmers Esther was expecting. They were men in suits and ties driving big, shiny cars. They drove by with hardly a glance at Esther’s sign.
The sun climbed higher. Esther paced back and forth and squinted down the road. Where were her customers? Soon she would have to go home for lunch, and she hadn’t sold even one bag. What would Ma say? She would think Esther's idea had been a foolish one after all.
Suddenly Esther heard a car coming from the direction of town. When it came nearer, she saw it was one of the shiny cars she’d seen earlier. It lurched to a stop, sending up a spray of dirt and gravel. The driver called, “What have you got?”
“Hazels and walnuts,” Esther called back.
“I’ll take two of each,” he said.
Thrilled, Esther brought him the nuts. But when the man handed her a quarter, her heart sank. “I don’t have any change,” she told him. Would he give the nuts back and drive away?
He waved his hand. “You can have the nickel,” he said. Then he roared away.
Almost immediately another car came. This car had three men in it. Between them they bought eight bags of nuts!
“At least I’ll have made one good buy today,” one of the men grumbled. The others snorted and laughed.
Three more cars of strangers passed by. Esther watched hopefully, but they didn’t slow. One red-faced driver was waving his fist and talking to his passengers. Esther wondered how he managed to stay on the road.
After a while, the farm wagons and cars she’d expected finally began to come. But not headed toward town—coming from town. And instead of families, most of them carried men and older boys. Many of them stopped and bought nuts from Esther. They were all in high spirits and laughing heartily.
“Did you see the look on his face when we gave it to him?” one man said, slapping his knee. “By Jove, that was a look I’ll never forget.”
The other men—men Esther recognized by face if not by name—were loud in their agreement. What was going on? But she had no time to puzzle it out. She had to scamper to fill orders. Then a car stopped and Pa jumped out. By this time, Esther’s curiosity was past controlling.
“What’s going on, Pa? Where’ve you all been?”
Pa swooped Esther up and twirled her around. His whole face was a smile. “We did something good today, Liebling. We saved the Nielson farm.”
Esther gasped. “How?”
Pa set her down on the crate. “All the farmers from twenty miles around went to the auction. We got there very early. Before anyone else. We blocked all the roads leading to the farm so no one else could get through. When the auctioneer asked for bids, the only one he got was from us—five dollars!” Pa laughed. “Such a look he got on his face! But he ha
d to take it. And then we gave the farm back to Nielson. So he will not be moving after all.”
Esther jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “You’re heroes!”
Pa shook his head. “Not heroes, Esther. Just good neighbors.”
Esther felt very proud later when she handed Ma and Pa the cigar box of coins she’d earned. One dollar and fifty-five cents in all! The look on Pa’s face was worth all her work and more. But Ma, what would Ma do? Esther trembled with anticipation.
Ma slowly reached out and touched Esther’s cheek. Her hands were red and work worn, but her touch was soft. Esther felt as if her heart might fly right out of her body it was beating so fast. “Nu,” said Ma. “You did good work, Esther. Very good work.”
It had not been a hug, but it had been so nearly one that Esther was satisfied. Ma was proud of her. The hug that would prove she loved her was coming closer all the time.
For the rest of the day Esther thought about how Pa had helped to save the Nielsons’ farm. He and the other men had come up with a daring plan. And it had worked. Now Wes and Thomas wouldn’t have to move away.
“He is a hero,” she whispered to Margaret that night. “No matter what Pa says, he’s a hero.” It had been a while since Esther had thought of Rin Tin Tin. But she thought of him now. She remembered thinking that Rin Tin Tin was a hero. But Rin Tin Tin only saved people from pretend disasters. Pa had saved people from a real one.
10 The Halloween Party
“I’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO MAKE A COSTUME out of these things,” Esther complained. She turned the flame of the kerosene lamp higher and surveyed the odds and ends on the table. There was an old, old shirt of Pa’s, much tattered and torn. There was a pair of his overalls. There were two mismatched work gloves, each lacking a couple of fingertips. And there was a battered and stained straw hat. Esther groaned in despair. “A witch’s cape would be so much easier.”
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