The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  “Are your folks well? Never thought we’d run into you way out here in Pine. We must come and visit now. I told Owen I’m ashamed to go anymore, not having taken the time to meet your folks.”

  Hannah smiled, acknowledged her kindness, and told them Harry had been called to the back by his wife. She was sure he’d be out as soon as possible and offered to help her locate the black buttons, which took only a few minutes, with Hannah pouring a whole scoop on the countertop for Mrs. Klasserman to search for herself. When Harry did not appear, Hannah found the card taped to the wall with a list of button prices. She decided on a fair amount for twelve black, steel buttons, collected the money, and scooped the buttons into a small paper bag she found. She handed the bag to Mrs. Klasserman, smiling and accepting her thanks with a polite, “You’re welcome.”

  When Harry returned, Hannah stood by the counter with her hands clasped behind her back, radiant with the feeling of ownership and accomplishment the transaction had given her. She wanted this job. Harry Rocher had a sickly wife, and his store was an unusual hodgepodge of items thrown together with no one to arrange things in an inviting manner.

  She watched his face and saw the gray weariness, the lines drawn deeply around his mouth, the twitch in the muscle of his cheek. She stepped up to the counter and said, “So, would you consider my offer? My family is homesteading, and my father is without money. If you would allow me to be in your employ, I’d make a difference. I could help your wife with the cooking if you have a place for me to sleep. I’ll do my best in return for enough food to feed my family for a week. That’s all.”

  Harry Rocher looked at her, this able-bodied, fresh-faced girl with flashing dark eyes and, no doubt, an assertive manner. He desperately needed help but could not afford to pay her. Quickly he calculated—ten pounds of the food she had mentioned would cost a few dollars. Perhaps he could throw in some lard and a partially opened sack of sugar that had turned hard. He thought of the widow Hennessy’s oatcakes that hadn’t sold. It would be a shame to feed them to the hogs. There was nothing wrong with them.

  He looked at Hannah and knew how desperately poor some of these homesteaders were. He slowly nodded his head.

  CHAPTER 10

  The new chapter of Hannah’s life that began with her job at Rocher’s store would, in many ways, prepare her for the future God had planned for her.

  Harry Rocher introduced Hannah to his wife, Doris, a slim woman who must have been pretty at one time. But, ravaged by a cruel disease, her hands were little more than pitiful claws that scrabbled to hold a comb or a glass of water. She was an unhappy woman, obviously despising the town of Pine and all its inhabitants. For more than thirty years, she had longed to return to the East, and three decades was an interminably long time to someone who would rather be elsewhere. It was her husband’s will for them to live on the plains, but her love and loyalty also chained her to the prairie. Corroded by bitterness and dissatisfaction, she mostly kept to herself and spent her time reading or talking on the telephone to relatives back East. On good days, when the pain in her hands subsided a little, she wrote letters or played Solitaire.

  She told Hannah to find her own way up the narrow staircase to the room on the left, Bob’s room, but he wouldn’t be home for at least nine months, perhaps a year. Harry followed her, opening windows in the stifling heat, turning back covers, running a hand across the dresser top, and shaking his head after examining his fingers.

  “Everything, just everything, shouts neglect,” he said quietly, so Doris would not hear. “Perhaps you are sent by God, an angel worker.”

  Hannah stopped short, astounded. Here was a man of the world, Dat would say, and he talked religion, just like Dat? Well, she could bet the fifty-cent piece in her pocket that he hadn’t fasted and prayed and carried on the way Dat had. Likely he’d went about his life, patiently doing what he could, as best he knew how, balancing his work and the demands of his sickly wife.

  Huh? Hard to think of herself as an angel worker. A few hours ago that Bess had called her … what was it? A waif? No, a babe in the woods, whatever she meant by that dumb saying. Well, an angel she was not, but she’d try hard to make a difference in this place. It appeared to have been much better at one time, especially this upstairs bedroom.

  The furniture was made of good quality oak, just like at her aunt’s house back home. The mirrored dresser was small, but had an ornate frame to hold the mirror, attached by dowels so that if you pulled it away from the wall, it swung forward or backward. The bed was a luxury Hannah couldn’t even think about, having slept on ticks, those buttoned up covers filled with stinking dried hay. You could never get away from the feeling of being in a barn, sleeping in a haymow, but then, it was better than sleeping on the ground or a bare floor and waking up with your legs as stiff as a stovepipe.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, marveling at its firmness and luxurious softness at the same time. Real pillows, clean white sheets. The walls were finished with a grayish white paper that had the texture of burlap. Ohio State pennants hung on the walls with framed black-and-white photographs of groups of boys kneeling or standing, wearing what looked like uniforms, a football in the foreground. She wondered which one was Bob, and what the name of their second son was.

  There was a straight chair, a clothes rack, more pictures, a few dull brown rugs scattered on the floor, chintz curtains blowing in the hot breeze that sucked against the screen when the wind changed direction. Everything was dusty, the window screens, the sills, the curtains, the tops of every article and piece of furniture. She went over to the window and looked down, but could see only the rough side of another building not more than six feet away, plus weeds, tin cans, empty Coke bottles, and piles of what looked like horse manure scattered along the narrow alley.

  There was no sense living in this squalor. The townspeople needed to get busy and do something about the appearance of this derelict little place. But first things first, she supposed. She’d go downstairs and get acquainted with Doris and her kitchen and see what Harry’s plans were. She tingled all over with the anticipation of returning home with the flour and cornmeal, to see her mother’s happiness and her brother Manny looking forward to a good meal. As often as he tried to disguise the hunger in his eyes, he would be rewarded with corn cakes and pan-baked biscuits. She ached to do anything to feed her family and lift their spirits, so alone out here on these plains.

  As far as her father was concerned, she felt nothing except perhaps a mild disgust. He needed to take responsibility for the well-being of his family. It was hard to have respect for someone who walked around with his head in the clouds, dreaming of all the miracles waiting just beyond the horizon, in the time when God’s provision would wondrously manifest itself. Oh, he didn’t doubt that a black cloud would appear one day, move over the homestead, and soak that corn.

  Hannah shrugged, shook off her reverie, went to the mirror, and looked at her reflection. Skinny. She was thin. Her eyes were huge, and her face looked thin too. Ah, well, hopefully she could eat here. Taking a deep breath, she turned and made her way down the steep, narrow staircase.

  Doris looked up at her with a wan smile. “Harry says you can cook. It will be wonderful to have a bit of help in the kitchen. Are you acquainted with a stove?”

  Hannah looked around the kitchen and saw the white appliances, the refrigerator, and what appeared to be a square white object with black coils on top. “A wood stove,” Hannah answered.

  Doris introduced Hannah to electricity and all its wonders. Wide-eyed, Hannah discovered a quart of ice-cold milk in the refrigerator, just where Doris said it would be. And you can keep butter and meat in there for days without spoiling, she explained. The stove became red hot at the flick of a button, the heat contained in the black coils.

  Hannah learned to cook well with Doris hovering at her elbows, a certain delight now smoothing her unhappy features. For one thing, Hannah made Doris laugh. Her blunt, unapologetic way of viewing the wor
ld and its inhabitants, and the colorful way she described her family filled Doris’s gray world with small rays of brilliant light, pinwheels of imagining, little bursts of unexpected humor that elevated her existence to a higher level of happiness. She could picture the drab homestead, the beautiful children (Hannah was a beauty), the submissive Sarah, the dreaming Mose. Doris knew Hod Jenkins and had seen Abby in the store, but didn’t know them personally.

  By the end of the week, the house had been cleaned to a spotless sheen, the floors swept and scrubbed, the windows washed, and the screens taken down and scrubbed with soap and water. Dust flew, and Doris held her breath as Hannah whipped about the house, rocking precious china dishes and lamps, shaking rugs with so much energy she was afraid they’d fall apart.

  Hannah swept the store, but the rearranging would come later. She felt she was not acquainted with Harry as she should be before suggesting ways his goods could be better displayed and more appealing to women’s eyes. There were so many changes to be made, so much to do in a week’s time that Hannah plopped into bed bone-weary every night, wishing Manny could know what it was like to sleep on a mattress with a good soft pillow again.

  On Saturday afternoon, then, Harry told her firmly that she could not walk home. His wife would accompany him, and they would drive her out to the homestead. For all Hannah’s pluck, she found it extremely difficult to tell him her father would not want her to ride in a car.

  Harry was bagging her flour and cornmeal, preparing a tin of lard, and gathering bits and pieces of leftover merchandise to give her. For a moment, he stopped what he was doing and asked, “And why not, do you think?”

  “It’s our religion.”

  “You can’t carry these things the fifteen miles home. Not in this heat, and the day fading already.”

  “Does someone have a buggy? A horse?”

  Harry shook his head and said, of course, but you’d kill a horse driving all those miles in this heat. So if she wanted to go home, she would have to ride in his car.

  And so Hannah did. She sat in the back seat of the glistening black car, which shone in spite of an ever-present layer of dust. The seats were upholstered and springy, in a kind of smooth leather, although it seemed too slippery to be leather. She sat stiffly, her feet braced side by side, her knees held together by her fear, and watched steadily out the front windshield through a gap between Harry and Doris.

  They rumbled away from town, picking up speed. The wind rushed in through the open window, lifting her white covering by its strings and tugging it away from her head. The pins that held it to her hair pulled horribly, so she grabbed her covering strings and tied them beneath her chin.

  The speed was frightening. She had never moved across the earth like this. The level prairie moved by as if it was propelled by a large, unseen object. The car sputtered and clattered. Harry gripped the steering wheel with both hands, but never moved it much, neither right nor left.

  The car slowed when Hannah gave directions, then slowed again, bumping over ruts and deep holes, grasses growing in over the track that served as a road. Doris tugged at the thin scarf she had tied over her coiffed hair, then closed her window, cranking a handle that raised or lowered it.

  Dust rolled in through the opened windows. Harry sneezed, then cleared his throat. Black dots appeared on a rise to their left, which puzzled Hannah. Whose cattle were they? They had already passed the road that led to the Jenkinses’ so perhaps there was another ranch they knew nothing about.

  Nervous as they approached, Hannah slid forward, gripping the front seat with both hands, asking Harry to drop her off before they reached the homestead.

  “I will not let you carry those parcels by yourself,” Harry said, turning to look at her while the car kept moving by itself.

  “We can’t do that,” Doris said matter of fact.

  “My father will not be pleased. I’m afraid he won’t be very kind or welcoming.” Hannah faltered in her speech, ashamed of her father, ashamed even more of the conditions in which they lived. The crude barn, the unfinished house made of crooked logs, the campfire in the yard, and the ruined corn crop. Since she had spent a week in town, their glaring poverty, their poor management of trying to raise corn, the garden struggling through the grass that threatened to reclaim the tilled earth, the thin children with the too-short pants and dresses, patched and ragged, assaulted her. Yes, they were ragged. Yes, they were thin. All of this seemed to press Hannah down into the smooth surface of the seat, shrinking her to a small black blob, an unnoticed, unworthy piece of failed humanity that had no business living in town, eating the Rochers’ good food, sleeping in a clean, comfortable bed, and acting as if she knew something about the store when, in truth, she was nobody. Raised surrounded by a secular community a thousand miles away, blindly following a delusional father with a broken wife by his side, she was now returning to the unpresentable situation they accepted as home.

  A fierce pride, coupled with anger, rose up in Hannah. She hated being poor. She could not face her father or her mother. This feeling left her scrambling for a handhold, as if she was climbing a steep cliff and could not find a way to keep pulling herself up. It would be easier to stop trying, just let go of all of it, and fall. Tumble down, down, down until her body collided with the earth, folded in on itself, and perished. All of this went through her mind in a second, the knowledge of her station in life, the confrontation of who she was, where her roots lay, and from where her father had pulled them up to transplant them in this forsaken country.

  Is this what her father meant by dying to self? All of that talk about being born again? You just fell off a cliff and gave up, figuring your life was no longer your own? She resisted fiercely, the thought of turning into her mother, going about her days with a song on her lips, no strength of her own, like a rubber band pulled this way and that, always depending on her husband, going through life without questioning anything.

  As the homestead came into view, Hannah looked out of the window of the car and thought bitterly. This is where it got you, here in the middle of nowhere, starving, her head as empty as a stone. Well, it wasn’t for her. She still had her wits about her.

  As Hannah expected, her father was taken aback, to state it mildly. His eyes popped in his head when he saw the car approaching, his pain and disbelief evident when Hannah got out of the car, clutching the groceries to her chest like a peace offering, her face a mixture of bravery and confusion.

  Harry stepped out, greeted Mose with a handshake, introduced himself, and told him they’d brought his daughter home. Doris remained seated, her face bland with hidden feelings, surveying the log house with careful, measured eyes.

  Hannah tried to slip past her father, going around him from behind, but he turned and caught her with a sharp, “Hannah!”

  She stopped and turned, her eyes bright and unflinching.

  “I thought we told you not to ride in cars. You have openly disobeyed.”

  What was there to say to that? Hannah ground her teeth in anger. Now why couldn’t Dat have waited to cut loose until after Harry and Doris had left instead of displaying his righteous little sermon here and now? “I brought food. I couldn’t carry all of this.” She thrust the heavy parcel out to show him what she had brought.

  When her father’s eyelids came down, and he spoke the inevitable, Hannah remained standing, clutching the cornmeal and flour as if his words could take it from her.

  “I have prayed that God would send us a blessing, but I didn’t think He would send it in the devil’s machine. So I propose, Mister …” he faltered, forgetting Harry’s name.

  “Rocher,” Harry supplied.

  “Yes, Mr. Harry Rocher. Our religion doesn’t hold with riding in cars, so I suggest that Hannah will not be in your employ in future. Also, the food you have so graciously brought, according to my way of thinking, has been tainted by riding in an automobile. So I would suggest that you put it back into the machine that brought you.”

&nbs
p; Hannah had never felt so helpless, or outraged. She opened her mouth to speak to her father, but could not utter a word. She could only stutter.

  Her father smiled at her, then walked toward her to take the food she clung to, as if her very life depended on it. “Hand it over, Hannah.”

  “Dat,” she began, feeling tears of rage and frustration prick her eyelids. “You need this flour and cornmeal. You can’t do this to Mam and the children. We … you, are hungry.”

  At the thought of Sarah and the little ones, Hannah saw the flicker of reconsideration, felt his weakening, and she resolved to stand her ground. “You can’t go on, Dat. We need to sit together and talk this over. I have a job now. I work for these people. They can’t afford to pay me, but they can spare us some food.”

  “Very well, then. But you must not ride in the automobile.” Turning to Harry, he said that Hannah would return on Monday by horse, which was their way. As for the food that had ridden in the verboten vehicle, there may be a time when common sense was involved, and this may be one of those times.

  So Harry and Doris Rocher rode back to the town of Pine, without meeting Sarah, having caught only glimpses of the children, their curiosity riding home with them. Harry shook his head and told Doris he had never seen anyone quite as strange as that Mose Detweiler, but Hannah seemed normal enough.

  For one evening, Doris forgot her own woes and talked in a lively manner, thinking up ways in which they could be useful in helping that family. Harry watched his wife’s face, the expression in her eyes, the way she waved her hands for emphasis, and thought that a miracle had happened right here in their car in the middle of the high plains.

  The evening meal was something to remember. Sarah worked the dough as if it was made of diamonds, each pat of her hands holding anticipation and gratitude. The children crowded around the bubbling cornmeal mush, sniffing, laughing, and clapping their hands. The smoke from the campfire made their eyes water. They coughed and scampered away only to return for more.