Mrs. Kenniker stopped talking. Becky glanced at her. The tight skin seemed to be stretched tighter than ever across the bones of the thin face.
“And then what?”
“It was too late,” said Mrs. Kenniker dully. “They said if she’d come three years sooner she could ’a’ been fixed. Git up, Jerry.”
The two horses jogged on, side by side, over the dusty prairie.
“That’s why I’m so anxious to get her learned. She’s an awful smart child; ketches on to book-reading and writing right away. She won’t never be able to do much hard work, and I’d like to get her learned so she can be a teacher, herself, some day. But we couldn’t get a school out here last year. We got the building put up in Crane Hollow, and then the teacher didn’t show up. We couldn’t get another, and it stood empty all winter. Now we’re after the school commissioner hard, and he’s promised us one this year.”
“Do you know who it’s going to be?”
“No, I don’t. But I heard yesterday that he had one chose.”
Becky’s heart sank. That meant that the position she had hoped for was gone.
“There’s the Oleson place,” said Mrs. Kenniker, pointing ahead of her.
“Place” was the name for it. It wasn’t a home; it wasn’t even a shack. It was a sod shanty set down in a tiny clearing. Behind it shivered some yellow cornstalks; a gaunt cow and a rusty plow made two spots of shade on the landscape, and some ragged chickens pecked the bare ground. The two visitors picked their way through a dooryard littered with boards and empty barrels. The door casing stood empty, and through the opening they saw an untidy woman sitting on an unmade bed.
She looked up as they entered, but did not leave her seat. She pointed, without a word, to a stretcher on the side of the room—a stretcher made by laying the outside door across two wooden chairs. And on this lay the pitiful little figure they had come to help. Nothing had been done since her death except to lift her from bed to pine door. She lay as she had been carried in, with yellow curls uncombed, and baby fingers stained with soil. She still wore her ugly little brown calico dress. There was no sign of death or disease about her except the one swollen leg that showed where the venom had entered.
Becky looked about her, uncertain where to begin. The sod house was divided into two rooms. One held nothing but a wall bunk, a stool, and an oil stove, with several lard buckets hanging on nails above it. In the other room there was a bed, two wooden chairs, and a baby buggy. A home-made table was pushed against the earth wall, and clothes were hung along the side of the room. There were no carpets, no curtains, no plaster, no floors. The sunlight blazed in through open window and door, chickens pecked the earth floor, and flies buzzed everywhere. Mrs. Kenniker drove the chickens out of the house and barred their entrance with boards, while Becky heated water in the lard pails that seemed to be the only kitchen utensils. Then they washed the little child, and brushed her fair hair. Of linen there was nothing in the house; no sheets, no towels, no clean cloths, even. When they asked for underwear the woman brought out a pair of dark calico bloomers.
“Ain’t you got any white cloth in the house?” asked Mrs. Kenniker.
Mrs. Oleson went to a pine box in the room, and produced two flour sacks, with traces of the flour inside. They washed them in a lard pail, and dried them in the hot sunshine. From the two pieces of coarse cloth Mrs. Kenniker fashioned a white slip, which they put on the baby.
“I cut it so she wouldn’t have ‘Rooster Flour’ running acrost her,” she whispered.
Becky looked at the dull calico dress, the clumsy bloomers, the dark tan stockings which the mother had laid out. “Don’t put them on, yet,” she whispered to Mrs. Kenniker. “I’ll go over home and pick up a few clothes. I’m sure I can find something better for the little thing.”
“I can’t bear to put that caliker dress on that baby.”
“Neither can I.”
“Marietta’s got a white dress. It’s the apple of her eye, but I think she’d give it up. In a case of need, like this now—”
“Don’t ask her for it till I see what I have. Do you suppose Mrs. Oleson would be offended if I brought back some clothes?”
“No, I don’t,” said Mrs. Kenniker, with a glance at the woman who sat gazing straight ahead of her, only looking up when they spoke to her. “She ain’t got a thing in the house. Bare cupboards is a good cure for pride.”
Together they pulled up the coarse blankets on the bed and plumped up the turkey-red pillows. Then Becky rode back over the trail to get the things that were most sorely needed. She found the house quiet and in order, so she did not disturb the children, whose voices sounded from the thicket, as she packed her basket to carry to the sod house. She put in a loaf of bread and a jar of jam, a clean white sheet, two white curtains, a strip of new mosquito bar, some towels, a pair of Joan’s white stockings, some white bloomers. And last of all, she went to her bureau drawer, and pulled out a flat box. In it lay a new nightgown, embroidered and lace-trimmed, with little knots and roses of palest pink ribbon. It had been Mary Dennison’s parting gift, passed through the car window the day she left Platteville.
“When can I use such elegance on the prairie?” Becky had called back through the window.
And Mary, trying to make the parting a little less funereal, had answered gayly, “At your first week-end visit.”
And now here was the prairie, the nightgown, and the week-end visit.
Becky hesitated. She wished she had not remembered the gown. Its daintiness would be utterly wasted in that dirty cabin, among the chickens and the flies. That sullen, slovenly woman, who had left a two year old baby exposed to snake bite, certainly deserved no such consideration. Besides, Becky wanted that nightgown herself. From the moment she had seen its sheer folds, its laciness, it had been the apple of her eye… That was what Mrs. Kenniker had called Marietta’s white dress… And yet Marietta would have given up her one and only white gown… And Mrs. Kenniker, who had but one Marietta and no money to buy her another gown, would have been willing… “In a case of need like this now—”
Becky hesitated no longer. She laid the box on top of the basket and set out on her third trip across the trail. It seemed to her as she entered the open doorway that she had never known what real poverty was until then.
Mrs. Oleson still sat at the table looking into nothingness. Mrs. Kenniker was clearing away the untasted meal.
“No use in coaxing her,” she murmured to Becky. “We just got to wait until her crying time comes. Then she’ll eat.”
Her eyes opened at the sight of the soft white gown. “You ain’t intending to cut that up!” she whispered.
Becky nodded.
“It’s a shame to spoil a lovely thing like that. I’ll ride home and get Marietta’s dress. That’s got the new wore off of it.”
“No, you start at this. If you cut it out I can help with the sewing.”
Becky turned her face as Mrs. Kenniker’s scissors slashed through the gown. “I’ll be putting the house in order,” she said.
She covered the bed with the sheet, and laid a clean white cloth over the staring red pillows. She put away the food, and stretched a white towel across the table. She washed the window, tacked mosquito bar on the outside, and hung the snowy curtains from the sash before she sat down to her sewing. Mrs. Oleson sat on the stool, not offering to help, and looking at her hands with unseeing eyes. When the gown was finished the two visitors dressed the baby, pulled on the clean white stockings, and smoothed the yellow curls. Then they lifted the little body and laid it on the white bed, covered with the new white mosquito bar, while they put the door back on its hinges and drove out the flies.
One by one the neighbors began to drift in. They brought supplies with them, butter and ham and eggs, baked beans, cake and doughnuts. They brought offers of help, of mourning bonnets, of wagons for the funeral. Three men came with spades to dig the little grave in the soil of the Oleson claim. A neighboring homesteader st
arted out on a ten-mile trip to engage a preacher. Another drove to Winner to send the sad news to the boy down near the Keya Paha River. When, at night-fall, the father drove up the trail with a tow-headed boy on the seat beside him, and a little coffin wrapped in burlap on the wagon floor, there were willing hands waiting to carry in the light burden, to unharness and feed the horses, and to do the evening chores.
Becky helped with the supper before she left. Then she went to take a last look at the dead child. In the only white bed in which she had ever been laid the baby was sleeping, her chubby little hands curled against the lace and the pink ribbons, her yellow curls touching the pink roses. Beside the coffin stood Ole, his long wrists hanging from his flannel shirt, his pale blue eyes looking down at his little sister. He glanced at his mother, sitting humped over on the low stool.
“Come here, Ma,” he urged.
Mrs. Oleson did not answer. She twisted her gnarled, brown hands on her knees and kept her eyes on them.
“Come on,” he said awkwardly. “You ought to see how sweet she’s sleepin’.”
The mother slowly left her stool, and looked down at the little girl. Her eyes traveled over the whiteness and daintiness below. Then the tears came, and sobs shook her work-worn frame. “That’s the way she should ’a’ been kept, always,” she said.
* * * *
Becky rode back home over the quiet prairie. It was still light, for the days were long in Dakota, but it was the last magical moment of it. Suddenly, like a miracle, the cap of darkness would fall and it would be night. The mourning dove sent out its sad note that always heralded twilight; the little creatures of the grass filled the air with melancholy music. It was as though the prairie itself was sorrowing for the poor Olesons. And the girl again felt that kinship with the country that had been so strong in the spring. It might threaten her, it might turn against her, but the lure was still there. It was the same lure that had brought the Olesons, the Kennikers, the Wubbers. The prairie was her prairie, and the people her people, all held together by the strange bond of needing each other.
* * * *
The Linville children, much excited, met her at the end of the trail with a chorus of “Let me tell her!”
“We’ve had visitors,” said Dick.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver,” yelled Joan and Phil.
“They stayed all afternoon,” said Phil.
“They’ve just gone now,” added Joan.
“Too bad I missed them,” said Becky, trying to enter into the holiday spirit. “What did they come for? Just a friendly visit?”
“Wanted to know about the school. They’ve got a teacher for Crane Hollow.”
Becky’s heart fell. Then Mrs. Kenniker’s words had been true. How would they live now! “I know,” she said quietly.
“How did you know?”
“Mrs. Kenniker told me when we rode over to Oleson’s this morning.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us at noon, instead of stealing away like the Arabs?”
“I hoped she was mistaken. I still had a faint hope that I might get it; Mr. Cleaver seemed so sure about it when he talked to you.”
“What on earth are you talking about? Why, you are going to get it!”
“I?” inquired Becky aghast.
“Yes, you. Mrs. Kenniker must have been pretty poor at putting the news across! The school commissioner, Mr. Peters, practically promised you the place. You’re to drive to Winner to see him Monday, but he says he’s only had one other applicant for the job, and that’s the oldest Welp boy, the one that lives with his uncle. And Mr. Cleaver said he thought, if you set your mind to it, you might make a better impression than Chris Welp.”
Becky got out of the saddle and gave Joan a hug of joy. “I’m too happy for words,” she said. “Now let winter come!”
“Mr. Cleaver seemed as tickled as we were,” said Dick. “He said that you were the very one for the place. I told him that the Welp kids would probably make trouble for you if you ran against their brother for teacher, and he said if they raised a rumpus in school you were to send them home and make them go to the school board for re-instatement. The board are all homesteaders around here and hate the Welps. That’s why the school commissioner was so sure you’d get the job.”
Becky went into the house with the children, while Dick put up Job for the night.
“Did you like Mrs. Cleaver?” she asked. “What kind of woman is she?”
“Swell!” said Joan. “She’s fat-ish, like him, and curly white hair, and jolly.”
“An’ not a bit fussy either,” put in Phil. “She didn’t care a bit how the house looked when she came.”
“Oh,” said Becky faintly. “How did it look?”
“Well, it was kinda mussy,” admitted Phil. “You see, the Wubbers came over in the afternoon, and it was so hot in the sun that we came in here to play. We thought you wouldn’t care. And the Wubbers wanted molasses on their bread, so we poured some out of the jug, and too much came out. It kinda got on the floor. And then we thought we’d play that Venus was Pete Welp. We wanted Autie to be him, but he wouldn’t, so we had to take Venus. And we put molasses on her. We didn’t waste it; just took what was already on the floor, and spread it on her with knives. An’ then we took the big sofa pillow—”
“You said it was too fat anyway,” reminded Joan.
“An’ ripped open a corner to let some feathers out. Only more came out than we expected. An’ then we stuck ’em over Venus.”
“What for?” demanded Becky.
“Why, for tar and feathers. We were playing she was Pete Welp being sent out of Tripp County, like Mr. Wubber said he’d be, some day.”
“Did you undress poor Venus?”
“We didn’t have to. She didn’t have any too much on her anyway.”
“Did you do all this in the house?”
“We had to. We needed the chairs for the railroad train that we put him on to send him out of the country. That’s how the feathers got all over the room.”
Becky’s heart sank. “Was this before Mrs. Cleaver came?”
“It was just when she came. They drove up when we were putting Venus on the train. But she didn’t mind the looks at all. She just laughed and laughed. And so did Mr. Cleaver.”
Becky groaned. “Where was Dick all this time?”
“Over helping Mr. Wubber fix his harness.”
“Oh, we ast ’em to come in,” said Joan with pride. “We knew you’d want us to. An’ Mr. Cleaver said: ‘What you playing, you young villains?’ An’ they watched us till we were done with the game, an’ then Mrs. Cleaver helped us wash Venus, an’ told Mr. Cleaver to pick up the feathers. An’ he got down on his hands an’ knees an’ did it. Only some stuck tight. We got a little molasses on the red chair, an’ we never knew it till he sat down there. An’ then Dick came home, an’ invited them to stay for supper. An’ they did.”
“I’m glad that ham was boiled,” said Becky. “What else did you have?”
“We didn’t bother cutting the ham. We had fried eggs an’ jam an’ bread an’ milk. Dick fried fourteen eggs, an’ we ate ’em all. They said not to make any trouble for them, an’ we didn’t. Dick served the eggs right from the frying pan so we wouldn’t have so many dishes to wash.”
Becky gasped. Knowing her family, she felt sure that her picturization of the scene of hospitality was unerring. “Why didn’t you get our regular kind of a meal? There was plenty in the house.”
“Because she kept telling us not to bother. I didn’t want her feeling uncomfortable because we were standing over the stove cooking for her.”
“You certainly avoided that. Did she eat anything?”
“She ate three eggs,” said Joan, “An’ a lot of bread an’ butter, an’ she asked who made that juli-cious jam. She said we were to tell you that she didn’t know when she’d laughed so much. And she wants us all to come an’ see them in Dallas; spend a night with them, she said. They’ve got room enough for all of us. An’
she left a basket of peaches for you and said we couldn’t eat ’em till you said so. May we each have one now?”
* * * *
They buried the Oleson baby the next day. There was no room in the crowded sod house to keep the little dead child longer. Dick and Becky rode over the dry trail on horseback. On a corner of the Oleson claim the neighbors had dug an oblong strip of sod out of the withered grass. The hole below looked large for so small a baby. The little white coffin made its last trip in the Oleson farm wagon, with the father driving and the mother and brother sitting on the jolting floor beside it. Ole’s eyes were no longer pale blue, but red, and he kept his cap down over them. His long fingers worked nervously. A few neighbors followed in a slow procession. They had not been able to find a minister. Mr. Oleson lifted the coffin from the wagon, and they all followed to the side of the grave. A meadow-lark called its six clear notes, and a gopher sat and watched. It seemed so terrible, thought Becky, to lay that baby away without a prayer, like a dead animal. Would no one say anything? She looked about at the shy, self-conscious faces of her neighbors, and saw that none would. Then she began the Lord’s prayer.
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 70
