The Bones of Plenty

by Lois Phillips Hudson

  A prolonged clanging of a lid lifter falling and banging against the side of the stove. Then, “Might as well leave the pyana set right here?” “Ya. No sense to move it till it’s sold. They can come on in here to try it out.”

  She came out after their voices had gone. There was a square discolored place on the dining room linoleum where the tin pad for the four legs of the heating stove had been. A few little rolls of lint that had been snagged in it were now liberated and wandering absently about.

  She felt lightheaded—no more steadied by the pull of the earth than were the rolls of lint. There was another blackened spot on the kitchen linoleum where the range had stood. Without the big stove there to be always walking around in the tiny room, to guard babies from, to stoke and shake and clean, to bake bread in and boil washings on—without that Monarch ruling her life, she felt more weightless than ever, as though now she were not standing on this blackened rectangle of floor but hanging above it.

  When they took the stove away they took the coal scuttle back to sit beside it in the yard. That seemed, somehow, to settle the course of the rest of her life.

  She went out to stand on the little porch where she had scrubbed diapers for two babies. The washboard and the tubs and the washstand with its wringer were already packed in the trailer—the only parts of the porch that could go with them.

  It exhausted her to contemplate even the tenth part of the work she had done on that porch—the quarts of beans and peas she had snapped and shelled there, the dishpans of tomatoes she had peeled there. And when the hardest work had not been on the porch, still there was a connection between that work and the porch. The barbarous crews of threshers lined up on its narrow little floor to wash and wait to be fed. And the iron scraper by her foot—how many thousands of times had she used it to scrape the droppings of the chicken house or the balled mud of the potato patch from the blade of her hoe and the niches of her heels?

  How many times had the four of them—or the three of them, before Cathy came—stood on this porch in the darkness calling goodbys to friends as they left after spending a long Sunday afternoon and evening, or after a butchering day, or after they had come to sing to her playing?

  And there had been other times when they had stood together on this porch watching a cloud spurt up over the horizon, waiting to see which way it would go. Only twice had the cloud come near enough so they could see clearly the shape of the long curved funnel swirling along, feeding the insatiable appetite above it—a black appetite even blacker than the black sky. Only once had the cloud come straight toward them, and then they had gone down the steps and closed the flat cellar doors over themselves and listened for the sound of the house being sucked away into the black appetite, but the funnel had swung away again like the aimless snout of an overfed animal, leaving them to sit in their damp unlighted cave smelling of potatoes and turnips till they could finally believe that they had been spared.

  There were years of investments fixed in the paintless boards of this porch. Strangers would soon see the four of them in their car, dragging behind them a ludicrous trailer made from a wagon box, and the strangers would think they were seeing only another shiftless roving family. Strangers would think they were seeing a man and a woman who would breed without responsibility for the children they produced, a man and a woman who had never been willing to make commitments, never been willing to labor and sacrifice for roots. The strangers would never be able to know about the porch.

  And all the people who had been her neighbors and her father’s neighbors, the friends whom she had greeted on this porch and sat with on this porch—they would pass by on the road, but they would never see the smoke of her fires again.

  And she was leaving this porch and the people who cared about her and her family and allowing her husband to take them all where nobody wanted them. For no matter where they went, there would be no place for them. She could teach again someday, perhaps, when Cathy was bigger. But teachers constituted the largest group of unemployed professional people in the country. She could never get a job now. Thousands and thousands of teachers were already ahead of her on waiting lists that were four years long. School districts all over the country were bankrupt. The enormous Chicago school district owed months of back pay to every teacher in the city. No, there would be no place for them, no matter where they went.

  She leaned against the side of the house, more tired than she had thought it possible to be, as though she was bearing in that one moment all the hours of the work of the porch and the fields.

  She could hear Cathy’s abandoned baby laughter echoing in the grove where Lucy was swinging her. Lucy had been so quiet all morning, as though she understood what a terrible thing was happening, but she had been so sweet too, keeping Cathy happy and out from underfoot. And if it was going to be bad for the mother not to have a porch or a stove, how was it going to be for the children not even to have a tree of their own again—a tree to climb into and to hang a swing from? I’m losing my mind. I’m losing my mind.

  She went back into the house and desperately scrubbed her face, but the ache in her throat made such a pressure that it kept squeezing the tears out of her eyes. She couldn’t understand where the tears kept coming from, but they were always there, ready to be pushed out whenever the ache got too big for the throat.

  Cars were arriving now; she heard them stop and the people get out and talk to each other. The sound of a car driving into a prairie yard—Rachel had always thought that was one of the loveliest sounds in the world—until today. She looked out the window to see the people poking about in the accouterments of her life.

  It felt a little like being naked before them, but it was really the opposite of being naked. Bodies were all alike without clothes, and lives, too, were all alike without their differentiating accessories. So it was more like putting out all the secrets that enclosed her nakedness. It was the uniqueness of her life that she had been obliged to lay out for all to appraise in the shadeless noon. They could all discover now what price they would put upon her uniqueness—upon the jumble of worn chattels that distinguished her from them. They would all know all her secrets now, and be so much better than she was, because she would not know all of theirs—just as millions of people could look at the pictures in their newspapers and know all about Finleys on rooftops floating over floods with all their remaining possessions piled around them, but those millions who had newspapers delivered each morning to their safe dry doors could still keep their own secrets from the Finleys.

  Helen Sundquist, her face gleaming and blushing in the sun, nodded self-consciously when Rachel came out on the porch. It was hard for everybody when somebody had to sell out. People who had gone to church together, eaten Sunday dinner together, butchered together, harvested together—they found themselves unable to face each other when one had to sell out and the other had to bid. But there was no place for them to hide from each other. Everybody understood that the bidder was the survivor and that he would take the spoils that went to survivors.

  Rachel began to feel that the sale would never commence. She would stand here in this naked nightmare forever, while her neighbors fingered her babies’ toys, her husband’s stock, her coal scuttle and her piano. The only thing that mattered to her now was release.

  The auctioneer began with the household things. It was the only way to sell them at all, since most of the people had come for the stock or the machinery. A good auctioneer was hired to sell them things they hadn’t come to buy, but it wasn’t easy to sell people things they hadn’t planned to buy—with cash as scarce as rain.

  The crib and mattress went for a dollar and a half. The Monarch went for ten before Rachel had even recovered from the shock of hearing it put up for five. The coal scuttle did sell, after all, for ten cents, and the round heating stove that had preserved them through nine winters went for seven dollars. Even George gasped over the buyer. It was Otto Wilkes.

  Lucy was hiding behind a tree at the edg
e of the grove to watch while he sold her toys. Her father had told her she could keep the money from them to buy new toys when they got settled out West or in Alaska. If they went to Alaska, she was going to buy a sled dog.

  Her tricycle went for twenty-five cents. Well, she had had it for a long time and there was no more paint on it to make it look new. Still, she had supposed that any tricycle would be worth more than that. But she couldn’t understand at all when her wagon was bought for another quarter. It was still not so very rusty on the metal around the outside. She was having a very hard time following what Mr. Churchill said, and she made up her mind not to worry about it, because she was sure that in all the confusion she had simply missed hearing what she was actually going to get. Then he held up the sled. He swung it up into the air in an effortless way that made it seem too light to be worth anything. It had always seemed much heavier than that when she dragged it up the hill after a race from the clothesline post with her mother.

  First he shouted about ten cents being the tenth part of a dollar, which everybody already knew, and then he started saying, “Do I hear a nickel? Do I hear a nickel? The twentieth part of a dollar? Nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel!”

  He let his hammer fall and handed her sled to a helper. Had her sled gone for a nickel? Even with a broken steering bar it must be worth more than that. So far she had fifty-five cents, if her sled had brought only a nickel. What could she buy out West for fifty-five cents?

  She went over and sat down in her swing. She wished she had an ice cream cone. But she couldn’t imagine how many years it would be before she even dared ask for one. Ice cream cones were very special treats for very good little girls who never had to be asked, even once, to stop bouncing a ball inside the house.

  The auctioneer moved over to the bed springs and frame. “All right! Here we have a fine, solid bed. Good tight springs.” He banged the coils with the flat of his hand. “Comfort and kicks! Who’ll start at two dollars for the works? Two dollars? Two, two, two, two, two?”

  Rachel couldn’t believe he had meant that the way it sounded. She kept seeing “Hot Springs Tonight” painted on the car in front of the Finley house. An auctioneer wouldn’t make a joke like that in front of her neighbors—men and women together—not a joke like that about the bed of her marriage. But her face began to burn and burn and burn.

  On the very day of the auction she had behaved like a Finley. On the very day of the auction she was publicly and lewdly joked about. It had never seemed possible that a person could become a Finley in one day.

  People were packing away things they had bought and rounding up children. They came up to Rachel asking for pardon behind the words they actually spoke—pardon for the offenses they had felt obliged to commit. (For if a man needed a good cow, and a good cow was going cheap, well, after all, he couldn’t afford not to buy, could he? Not and still compete with another fellow who was going to get another good cow for a third of what she was worth.)

  There had been a farewell party for the Custers, but now everyone came once more to say goodby—Going to miss you folks a lot … Your mother’s going to be lost without you, Rachel … Who’s going to play the piano for church now, and Epworth League? … Good luck … So long now … Drop us a card now and then; we’d hate to lose track of you … Take care of yourselves … So long … Let us know, now, how you make out … Stake out a claim for me, if you run across anything … So long … Good luck.

  Thus lightly did each parting neighbor give a little shake to the roots that had lain dying in the sun all afternoon. The last globules of drying earth, held in the last hairy root-endings, pulverized and vanished in the wind. It took but a little time, in such a sun, for uncovered roots to perish and to pass away as though they had never been.

  Everyone was eager to escape. Every time somebody sold out the rest heard the hammer knocking, as impartial as death. Still, there would be a little less competition now—perhaps a little more chance for the rest….

  They were, indeed, eager to escape. They must get home as soon as possible and do their chores.

  Everyone but Rachel and George had chores to do. For the first evening in almost ten years they had no chores to do—not so much as one old hen waiting for somebody to throw her a handful of corn.

  Rachel had left the suitcase open in the dining room so she could add a last stray diaper or dish towel. She went in now and snapped the locks. The only other thing in the room—in the house, for that matter—was the piano. And the piano bench. Somebody she didn’t know had bought it. They would come for it tomorrow, when she was already far away.

  If I go over and touch it now—just touch the middle C above the golden lock—if I should just let myself strike that middle C again and remember the day the men brought it to the house while my father stood in the wide arch between the dining room and the parlor—smiling because he loved me and because he loved music. If I should just touch that middle C above the golden lock again, I would be turned to a pillar of salt; I would never walk out of here and get into the front seat of the car beside my husband, where the world says I belong. Even my mother says I belong there. She has changed, hasn’t she, since my father died? Before, she would have said I ought to come home—that we all ought to come home—that my husband could come home or go wherever he pleased.

  And now my husband and my babies and I will sleep in my home tonight and never again. And we will still have this last goodby with her tomorrow morning, though we cannot take the time to go to the grave again. How will she keep her sanity now? With my father gone and that girl in the house? How will I know about her? How she is? How she feels? How will I say goodby to her? How will I say goodbye to that only place where I was safe? How will I climb into our car and shut the door—as though we had just stopped in on our way home from town—and ride down that hill? That hill I ran down when I was little, like Lucy, to fetch the mail or to put a letter in the box or just because, at the bottom of it, where the drive joined the county road, there was a sudden small mound over the culvert that bounced me into the air?

  What shall I say to my mother tomorrow, when I tell her goodby? What shall I say to my brother, who will try to make money from my father’s farm, now when the whole world is dying? He is going to send me half of the profits that aren’t essential to keep the farm going. (What will half of nothing be?) Will I think of something to say to his wife? That girl who is wholly related to me now….

  Long before sunset, the last cow—lowing to her pasture and stall companions—had been loaded and jolted out over the dusty ruts between the gray-black fields.

  There were several things that had not been sold—a drag, held together by wire and not much else, some household items, some parts of things that seemed so worthless, separated from their wholes, as to be a disgrace to the earth. And Lucy’s sled was still there. It hadn’t been sold for a nickel after all.

  Otto Wilkes prowled the yard. Like the damned yellow jackal he was, thought George, who wondered if he’d be able to talk to him without smashing his face in for him.

  “You folks aim to do anything with these here things?” Otto asked deferentially.

  George looked away from him, down the hill toward the empty barn, the empty pasture. It didn’t seem possible that they had made so little. “Take it! Take it!” he said. “Take any of it and all of it!”

  Lucy pulled at his pants leg. “Can’t we take the sled? I thought somebody bought it for a nickel, but it’s still here.”

  “Oh, now, don’t be silly! We couldn’t pack that sled in that trailer. It isn’t worth it. Besides, there probably won’t be enough snow to bother about, where we’re going.”

  “But Alaska is practically all snow! We could get a sled dog and tie him to this sled.”

  “I said don’t be silly! Besides, we probably won’t get to Alaska at all. I’ve been trying to tell you that! We’ll probably just wind up on the West Coast somewheres. You gotta be somebody’s brother-in-law—you have to have some pul
l back in Washington to get hold of that homestead land in Alaska. They’re probably saving it all to give to the railroads.”

  They put the last things in the trailer. George dropped some change into Lucy’s hand. She counted it out. Ninety-eight cents. Her ice-skates had been sold for fifty cents. “Minus commission,” he said, and he laughed. “Tie it in your handkerchief and let Mother keep it for you. You’ll have fifteen hundred miles to think about how to spend it.”

  The car started slowly up the hill. Lucy could feel how her mother and father both worried about the car and how they were afraid it would never haul the trailer all the way.

  The mouth of the thirsty sun fastened on the dry brow of the hill beyond the road and began to drink the dust of the late sky. The black fields of James T. Vick grew pinkish as his tenant, George Armstrong Custer, drove out over them for the very last time.

  Lucy got up on her knees to look out the rear window. The house was growing smaller and smaller, but she thought she could still see, in one of the three panes of fiery glass, the round dark spot of cardboard over the hole her ball had made in the kitchen window.

  Author’s Note

  In 1933 this nation was closer to political collapse than it has ever been since the Civil War. In these present days of affluence it is hard to believe that so many of us could have been so poor less than a generation ago. The war-tainted prosperity that began in 1941 makes the preceding dozen years seem shorter and farther away than they really are. This abnormally elongated perspective with which I must deal has led me to employ some verbatim reminders. The more outrageous the scene, the more closely it may follow an unimpeachable source. For instance, most of the words of County Agent Finnegan are verbatim statements from contemporary publications of the United States Department of Agriculture.