Mom said, “Oh, no! Can you imagine?” She shook her head and returned to the bread she was kneading, reinforced in her own doubts about doctors.
I thought about pulling out the hair. I thought about having cow shit smeared on my arm every day. I thought about being treated with cow salve.
“I think we should use what works on the cows,” I said at last. Dad nodded and we went to the barn to get the salve. The ringworm cleared up in no time.
Now my hand hurt like a son of a gun. If Dad had a solution for this, I wanted to know it. “It hurts horrible,” I whimpered, wallowing in my sorry state. “How do you make it stop?”
Gingerly, Dad held my most damaged middle finger, which even swollen as it was almost disappeared between his huge fingers. “It’s the blood pushing against the nail that makes it hurt. The way to make it stop hurting is to take a drill and make a little hole in the nail. That will let the blood come out. The pressure will be off and it will feel better.”
“What?” I gulped. At the mention of the word ‘drill,’ I wanted to yank my hand back to safety. I envisioned my finger under the drill bolted to the bench in Dad’s workshop. I envisioned the drill, high pitched and shrill, in the dentist’s office. My back went stiff and I nearly skidded off his lap in a desperate attempt to escape. My tears dried up like a faucet turned off.
Dad didn’t move. He kept his arms around me. He held my damaged fingers in his hands. He sat waiting for me to absorb this horrifying thought.
As I thought about it, maybe my fingers didn’t hurt so bad. Not enough to keep crying. Certainly not enough to have Dad drill through my fingernails.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and I leaned my head back against his shoulder for a few minutes. At last I tilted my head up so I could look in his eyes and asked, “Would I still lose my fingernails?”
“Yup. It just wouldn’t hurt so much as now.”
I thought about it some more and then scooted off his lap. I discovered that if I held my hand up above my shoulder it didn’t throb quite so much. So I walked around most of the rest of the day like the Statue of Liberty. I did lose my fingernails. But I was going to anyway. I decided it was nice to know that there were options, nicer still to know what those options were, and the best to be able to decide for myself which one to take.
“I Bet You A Million Bucks”
For all but one year of my eight years in country school, I was the only one in my grade. Most of the time I felt a little smug about it, but sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have someone in my class, someone who had the same assignments, someone who might be a best friend. When I thought about those things, I’d get a little lonesome. But one year there was another kid in my class; his name was Virtus. That year I learned to be more careful with both wishes and words. That year I learned an important lesson about values and how sometimes they can come into conflict.
That morning, just like on the first day of school every year, my sisters and I prepared to head off for school, dressed in the new dresses Mom sewed for us over the summer. We always wore dresses to school except on cold and snowy days when we wore dresses with long pants under them. After we ate breakfast and lined up for the first-day-of-school pictures Mom always took, we grabbed our lunch pails and ran through the alfalfa stubble of the field between our house and the school, dodging grasshoppers and chasing butterflies. We climbed over the stile to the schoolyard, where grass was already dry from the summer heat.
As soon as we were all at our desks, Miss Fowler introduced Irving and Virtus, her hands resting lightly on the shoulders of two boys as tall as she. But that wasn’t saying much because Miss Fowler was only a little over five feet herself. Their names, their black hair and dark eyes, everything about them was strange. But most intriguing to me was when Miss Fowler said, “Virtus is in fourth grade.” Fourth grade was my grade!
While the familiar words of the Pledge of Allegiance rolled automatically out of my mouth, I eyed the new kids. Their pin-straight hair was cut as though someone had put bowls over their heads and cut right around. I expect this is exactly what their dad did, and I snickered. One of our hired men was going on a date one Friday night and needed a haircut. Dad said he could take care of that. As the hired man sat on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, Dad put a bowl right over that young man’s head and cut neatly around the edges. The result was not what the hired man expected. He skipped his date. And he never let Dad come near him with scissors again.
What was most surprising about Virtus and Irving, though, was that they were dirty. Not just dirt under their fingernails, but dirt on their clothes, on their necks, in their ears. In fact, I couldn’t stop looking at the black grit built up in Virtus’s ears.
Mom was cast from the ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’ mold. The day didn’t go by that she didn’t yell at us as we were getting ready, “Make sure you wash your neck and in your ears. You don’t want potatoes to grow in there!” In fact, that must have been the case with all the kids in our neighborhood because everyone arrived at school with clean clothes and scrubbed hands, faces, necks, ears. I didn’t know what to think of someone who came to school dirty.
I couldn’t think about this for long. We all got right down to the work of the day. Miss Fowler had assignments for each grade—penmanship, math, a new chapter in history. How she kept us all going at the same time, I don’t know. Sometimes it must have seemed to her she was like that man we watched on the Ed Sullivan Show, the man who spun plates on the top of sticks, getting one plate spinning, running to get another plate spinning, then racing back to the first one to give it another spin, and on and on. How long could he keep them all going before one or more crashed to the ground? Miss Fowler seldom let anything fall.
While we worked at our desks, Miss Fowler had each class come to the front of the room to do their specific problems on the blackboard, read or recite. Meanwhile all the rest of us worked at our desks under the watchful eyes of President Washington, who gazed at us from his picture at the front of the room, and President Lincoln, who observed us from the north wall. I liked school. There was always something new to learn.
The sun that shone in the east windows and warmed our backs at the beginning of the day moved along to shine over our left shoulders. Before long, it was time for recess and Miss Fowler excused us for a half-hour.
In a country school where you might have only a handful of students in the entire school, the playground is a melting pot. For a game of baseball or Red Rover or Pom Pom Pull Away, you need everybody, no matter what age, no matter what background, no matter what capability. Virtus and Irving were drawn in immediately.
Over the next few days and weeks, I learned that Virtus and his family moved around a lot. He’d been in a lot of schools. He bragged about all the places he had been and things he had done. While there wasn’t any real reason not to believe what he was saying, most of the time what he said was just so outlandish I ignored it.
One day we took our lunch pails out under the box elder trees to eat. Dust coated the grass. The late September sun was hot but we didn’t pay any attention to that. My grandma used to say, “There’s no sense being cold if you don’t have a sweater.” Same way with the heat.
My lunch pail held pancake sandwiches, a banana, a brownie, and a thermos of milk from our own cows. I loved the pancake sandwiches Mom made by rolling up leftover pancakes from breakfast spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar. Eating these sandwiches was like eating dessert.
Virtus had a peanut butter sandwich. That was it. He never had much to eat and always seemed hungry. I felt bad about that so I shared some of mine.
“Do you want this brownie?” I gestured at the thick brownie wrapped in wax paper.
“Yeah. That would be great!” He snatched it so fast I didn’t have time for a second thought.
“How about some milk?”
“Sure.” He drained my thermos before I had a chance to get any myself.
I he
ld tight to the banana. I knew I’d have to be careful what I offered him in the future.
With no prospect of more food in sight, Virtus lay back on the grass and began tossing a baseball up in the air with one hand and catching it with the other. “I bet I can throw this ball from here and get it over the top of the school,” he said.
“Oh, you cannot,” I said, leaning back against the tree trunk to enjoy the banana.
“Can too. I’ve done it lots of times,” Virtus said.
“Oh, you have not.” I flicked a box elder bug off my shoulder. “I’ve seen you throw and there’s no way you’d even get the ball as far as the school, let alone clear the roof.” Okay, I knew he could get it as far as the school, but who cared?
“I bet I can. Want to bet?” he challenged, sitting up and turning to look right at me.
“Sure I’ll bet,” I said. “I bet you 10 cents you can’t.” Ten cents was my whole week’s allowance.
“I bet you $100 I can,” he countered with an impressive figure.
“I bet you a million dollars you can’t,” I threw out the most incomprehensible number of all time.
Betting a million bucks was something my sisters and I did all the time. Betting a million bucks was a signal that the bettor was so sure of herself there was no contesting it. Betting a million bucks was the guaranteed way to stop a discussion and make the other person back down. Besides, even on a 50-cent bet or a $1 bet we understood there was no money changing hands. None of us had any money regardless of who won. Bets were just talk.
“Done!” Virtus yelled, a grin lighting up his face, his dark eyes dancing. “I take that bet. I’m gonna win a million bucks!” He jumped to his feet and strutted around me like a little Banty rooster.
A tight little knot began to form in my stomach. Something in the way he said that made me think he didn’t realize betting was just for fun. I eyed him. Still, there was no way he could throw the ball that far. I kept up the show.
“Huh uh. You’re gonna owe me a million bucks,” I countered. “You have to throw it from here, and it can’t even touch the school at all,” I began to put parameters on the bet for protection.
“Just watch me,” he said. He paced back and forth between the trees. He looked at the school. He squinted at the sun. He licked his finger and held it in the air. That was a joke since there wasn’t any wind at all. He tossed the ball gently in the air a couple more times.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked, grinning at me. Without waiting for my answer, he took one last long look at the school roof, drew his arm back and followed through, releasing the ball in a high sailing arc with a power I’d never seen before. The ball went up; it was high enough. The ball kept going; it was far enough. As the ball flew, the knot in my stomach grew, and as I heard the ball thud to the ground on the other side of the school, the knot was tight as a noose.
For the first time I realized I could be in real trouble. Even though betting was just a game to us, giving your word wasn’t. While that might seem like a small breakdown in logic, I’d given my word and I knew that now I owed Virtus a million bucks.
“Ha!” he laughed. “Ha, ha, ha!” he leaped in happiness at a truly great throw. “You owe me a million bucks. You owe me a million bucks! I’m RICH!”
“I do not,” I tried, my voice weak. “Nobody ever gets a million bucks.” Even as I said it, my mind raced ahead to think about where I might actually get a million dollars. Nobody had that kind of money. I knew it. But not paying on the bet, not coming through on my word was more impossible.
“You do, too. You owe me a million bucks and you have to pay it or I’ll tell,” he threatened as he stood, eyes narrowed, nose just inches from mine.
I couldn’t let him tell. Everyone would laugh. Everyone would say I was stupid. Miss Fowler would tell Mom and Dad, and they’d think I was horrible. I could already see the disappointment on their faces. I’d never be able to look them in the eye again.
“Well, I don’t have it WITH me,” I blustered, stalling to grasp even a minute to think my predicament through. “Tomorrow,” I offered with a whole lot more confidence than I felt. Virtus glared suspiciously at me for long seconds before he uttered, “Okay,” wheeled and stalked away.
I sat through the rest of my classes that day, my stomach tying itself into tight knots. I felt every bit like the last time I threw up. Meanwhile, Virtus spent the rest of the day sprawled in his desk, smirking at my discomfort.
After school, Jane and Sue raced across the field for home, but I lagged behind, my legs getting heavier with each step. Grasshoppers jumped out from under my feet, landing steps ahead in the alfalfa stubble. Their leaps seemed way too happy in my opinion. I kicked up dust. That night the knots in my stomach got bigger and bigger. I had to get the money, but how?
As I lay in bed, I concluded that I’d have to pay Virtus the money I owed a little at a time. Even then, coming up with a million dollars could take the rest of the year. My allowance was NOT going to cover this.
The only person who had money in our family was Dad. Could I ask him for it? No way. If I’d heard him say once, I’d heard him say a million times, “Don’t spend money you don’t have.” I could never admit I’d been so stupid as to bet away money I didn’t have. And such an amount; I would die of shame first. And I could not tell Mom. She didn’t have any money that I knew of, and she’d tell Dad.
I would have to break my word or steal the money from my dad. Which was worse? At the moment, it seemed that breaking my word was worse because two of us—Virtus and I—would know about it. If I stole from my Dad, maybe I’d only have my poor conscience to contend with. Maybe Dad would never know.
Gradually a plan formed in my mind. It was this. Dad wore work clothes on the farm. He had nails and a pocketknife and a handkerchief in the pockets of his work clothes. When he went to town, he changed clothes. He had loose change in the pocket of his dress trousers and those trousers hung on a hook in his bedroom closet. He never took the change out of the pockets. It should be a simple matter to slip into his closet when he and Mom were in the barn milking and take some of that change. Not all of it, of course. My plan would never work if he expected to find change in his pocket and none was there. But a little every day or so. That shouldn’t be noticeable. It seemed like a plan that could work.
By the time I climbed over the stile from our field to the schoolyard the next morning I was almost certain the plan would work and I’d begun to resign myself to living life as a thief. Virtus waited for me by the stile.
“Where’s my money?” he hissed. “You owe me that money and you have to pay it.”
“I don’t have it,” I squirmed. “I’m working on it. Tomorrow.”
Virtus’s mouth twisted into a frown. “You have to pay me or I’ll tell,” he threatened again. Telling was the worst. We both knew it.
“I will,” I insisted, “but I can’t pay all of it at once.” I hated him right then but I’d begun to like me even less.
“Okay, but I better see some of it tomorrow.” Virtus growled as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his dirty bib overalls and stomped away.
School meant very little to me at that moment. I could think only of the money I owed. My plan was trickier than it might at first seem because I couldn’t let my sisters know about this scheme either. To be revealed as a thief to my family was not an option.
After school, I sweated out waiting for my sisters to be out doing chores and for Mom and Dad to be in the barn. I slipped into their bedroom closet. The mingled smell of tobacco and cigarette smoke, sweat and a tinge of cow manure that filled the closet surrounded me with a familiar and loved “Dad smell.” But with the guilt of being a thief on my heart, I could hardly bear it. I listened for any sound that would say my sisters were back in the house. Hearing only silence, I slipped my hand into the trouser pocket.
Bonanza! There was a lot of change. I took a handful and sorted out a quarter, a nickel, a dime and a few pennies. I
could get away with that, I thought. And it would keep Virtus at bay. I put the rest of the change back in Dad’s pocket; made sure everything was hanging just as before and backed out of the closet. My knees felt all rubbery, my guts turned loose and dangerously watery.
The next day Virtus was waiting for me the second I stepped down from the stile. My skin burned as I handed over the money.
He looked at the little pile of change and growled as mean as the neighbor dog, “That’s not enough.”
“It’s all I could get,” I whispered, near tears. “I’ll get more tomorrow.”
Telling my sisters, telling my parents, telling Miss Fowler never came to my mind as a viable option. I set aside “Thou Shalt Not Steal” from Sunday School. I trashed “Honor Thy Father.” I gave up on the ability to look at my own sorry face in the mirror. Keeping my word and paying my debt to Virtus seemed like the only things that mattered.
That night I repeated my burglar routine. And the next night. And the next night. Each day I handed over a small payment on my million-dollar bet. Each night I suffered a stomachache of guilt and regret.
Within a week guilt weighed more heavily on me than the possibility I would be found out. I couldn’t make myself go into Dad’s closet again. I didn’t sleep that night, thinking of the disaster that waited me when I didn’t hand over the payment to Virtus the next morning. I didn’t care. I didn’t know what would happen when Dad and Mom and my sisters and Miss Fowler found out, but I guessed I’d just have to live with it.
I dragged my feet all the way to school the next day. I climbed the stile like a convicted man going to the gallows. Virtus didn’t wait until I was in the schoolyard.
“Where’s my money?” he barked.
“I don’t have it. I can’t get it.” My throat closed up on the words. Humiliation burned red on my face. I couldn’t look Virtus in the eyes.
“You have to. You owe me,” he demanded, his dirty hand palm up in front of me, his eyes black as a thunderstorm.
Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl Page 11
