Hattie Big Sky

by Kirby Larson

  * * *

  The first weeks of August brought rejuvenating rain. Then the weather turned even hotter. Thanks to help from Karl and Wayne Robbins, we were done binding my fields in a few days. I helped them as they helped me and thus passed the weeks while my grain dried, standing in proud shocks in the field.

  The weather may have been good for the grain, but it did nothing for anyone’s temper. Even my solid Plug balked when I tried to hitch him up to help at the Robbinses’.

  That same night, I went in to fix supper. I set a plate on the table while I tried to think of something to make without cooking. In the few short minutes it took to scrounge up some food, the plate on the table had grown hot to the touch.

  After eating, I took the letter I was writing to Uncle Holt and sat on the stoop to finish it. Mr. Whiskers was stretched across the doorjamb, spread out as long as he could be, trying to catch every possible breath of air to cool off. I reached down to scratch his belly, and he didn’t even move. Karl says that with this heat, I wrote to my uncle, my grain will be ready to thresh in about two weeks. I’m glad I’m not growing corn—it would pop before I could harvest it!

  Outside, puffs of dust rose up above the coulee. Someone was coming on horseback. Maybe it was Wayne on his way home from hunting; last week, he’d brought me two sage hens.

  But it wasn’t Sage who trotted into view. This horse bore the Tipped M brand. Sitting atop the range horse was Traft Martin.

  “May I get some water for my horse?” he called out, pulling up by the well.

  “Certainly.” I had no squabble with Trouble, no matter what my feelings might be about his rider.

  He pumped some water into the trough. “Things are looking mighty dry around here.” He pushed his hat back on his head. “Mighty dry.”

  “Uh-huh.” Hadn’t I been lying awake nights, fretting over the very same thing? Once the grain was shocked and standing, there was always the fear of fire.

  “You’ll be threshing soon?”

  “In a few days.”

  He nodded. “Hear the harvest over to Glendive was a disappointment.”

  I could see where this was going. “That’s Glendive.”

  He gave a grudging smile. “And not here.”

  Now I nodded.

  He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead and resituated his hat. “It’s not too late,” he said.

  “Too late?” I parroted. “For what?”

  “My offer.” He hung the cup back up by the pump.

  “I really am not interested.” I tried to keep my tone even. Why was he pushing this point again? “For the last time, I can’t accept your offer.”

  “That’s a big mistake on your part.” His green eyes turned gray.

  I matched his stare with one of my own. I’d stood up to bullies before. “Perhaps. But it’s my mistake to make.”

  He jerked at Trouble’s reins. “So you think.” He rode out of the yard. My yard.

  For now.

  Two days after Traft’s visit, Karl and some other neighbors rumbled onto my place to start threshing. In the morning, I worked with the men in the fields. Then Leafie and Perilee came to help me bake for noon dinner. I suspect it was the promise of Perilee’s pies—raisin and chokecherry and plum—that kept the crews working steadily. But my biscuits were respectable; Karl ate a half dozen himself.

  “Oh, hon, that’s only ’cause he needs some way to sop up Leafie’s good buffalo berry jelly!” Perilee teased.

  The children played around our feet as we washed another stack of plates. Chase was impatient. At eight, he thought himself old enough to help with the harvest.

  “No sirree bob.” Perilee put her foot down. “Those machines are no place for children.” Chase had to content himself with running cold drinks out to the field. He carried water in crockery jugs, wrapped in burlap, and stashed them in shocks to keep them cool. He marked the shocks with a bundle of straw laid crossways on top so the workers could easily find them. Once, after he made a trip out with refilled jugs, I spotted a tiny figure standing on top of the thresher with Karl. I didn’t say a word to Perilee.

  “Let’s sit a minute before we do one more thing.” Perilee sat down, fanning herself with her apron. “Besides, Lottie’s hungry.”

  “Oof. It feels like an oven.” I poured lemonade for the three of us, and we sat. Leafie had slipped her shoes and stockings off; I did the same.

  “What would the Ladies’ Aid Society think?” Perilee asked, arching her eyebrows. Then she took off her own footgear and wiggled her bare toes. “Who cares—this is heaven.”

  We sat quietly, the only sounds the occasional cry of the curlew and Lottie’s contented nursing.

  “Saw Traft Martin riding this way the other day,” Leafie said.

  “Well, at least this time he left our fence line alone,” said Perilee. She shifted Lottie to her other breast.

  “He came by a few weeks ago, too.” I rolled the cool glass against my neck. “And it wasn’t a social call.”

  “He try to buy your claim?” asked Leafie. “He had the nerve to ask me to sell awhile back.”

  I nodded. “He wants to build the Tipped M into something even bigger than the Circle Ranch.”

  Leafie exhaled hard. “What did you tell him?”

  I held up my hands, swollen from the heat, cracked by water and hard work. “I said this life was much too glamorous to ever give up.”

  Perilee laughed. “Sugar, you are a caution.”

  Leafie’s face grew serious. “You be careful. It’s one thing for me to tell him no. He wouldn’t mess with me. But—”

  “I know. I know.” I held up my hand to stop her words from feeding an imagination that had already conjured up what an angry Traft might do. “I’m going to hang on until November.”

  “You need any help with that hanging on,” said Perilee, “you say the word.”

  “Same on this side of the street,” said Leafie. She tipped her head upward. “Lord, look at that sky.”

  Black clouds rolled over the plains. I recalled my conversation with Traft. “That’s not grasshoppers, is it?” My heart throbbed in my throat.

  “Don’t think so.” Leafie pushed herself out of the chair.

  “Rain!” Perilee hopped up, too, and began to gather things together. “We better get everything inside. Mattie!” She waved her apron. “You and Fern come on in now.”

  We got everything—and all the children except Chase—inside just as the sky opened up.

  “That’s not rain.” I had my forehead pressed to my one window. With all the damp bodies, the room was as steamy as if it was wash day.

  “Oh, Lord.” Leafie’s hand flew to her chest. “Hail.”

  The hard pea-sized pellets quickly turned to stones the size of eggs.

  “Chase!” Perilee ran to the door, jerked it open, and screamed his name.

  “Don’t fret.” Leafie pulled her back. “Karl and them have taken cover. Karl wouldn’t let anything happen to that boy.”

  The sky hurled hailstone after hailstone onto my field. Like a pitcher on fire, throwing fastball after fastball, heaven struck me out and good. The cut flax, all neatly windrowed, was the first to be mowed down. Then the wheat, trampled to the ground as if a giant had stomped through. And stomped all over my dreams. I could do nothing but watch and feel my heart break in two. After what felt like hours, the clattering against the roof slowed.

  “Looks like it’s over,” said Leafie.

  The door slammed open. Karl, Wayne Robbins, and Chase burst inside.

  “Karl!” Perilee rushed to him. Blood dribbled down his forehead.

  “Blasted things the size of oranges,” said Wayne. “And hard as coal.”

  While Perilee tended to Karl, I set about making some tea. “Nice and sweet,” I said, handing a mug to the shivering Chase. “This will help.” I closed my eyes. The tea could warm a frozen boy, but what could help me?

  Chase took a shaky sip. “Karl threw me un
der the tractor. All he and Wayne could do was cover their heads with their arms.”

  The quiet was as powerful as the drum of hail had been moments before. I looked out through the open doorway. My kitchen garden was in shambles. Part of the chicken coop roof slumped against the well pump. Albert and the girls huddled, no worse for the wear, under the coop. The sunflower I’d been nursing along was broken in half, the yellow petals pummeled into the dirt.

  I forced myself out the door and toward the fields. Wayne Robbins followed me, shaking his head.

  “White reaper, my dad called it,” he said as we took in the destruction. “The flax is done, Hattie. But you can save some of the wheat.” His voice went down at the end, as if he was trying to convince himself of his own words. “Sell it for feed.”

  “Feed?” During all my months of ciphering, I had counted on selling my grain to the miller at grain prices, not to the odd farmer as cattle feed.

  “You won’t be the only one, Hattie.” Wayne no doubt meant his words to comfort, but they only added to my worries. How many other fields were destroyed by this hailstorm? There could be dozens of us trying to salvage what we could. How many farmers were there who needed to buy feed? Not as many as would need to sell it, that was certain. Tears burned at my eyes, but I would not let them fall. What good would they be, anyway?

  I bucked up and we salvaged. Karl drove the hay wagon, pulled stoically by Joey, Star, Sage, and Plug, through the ravaged fields. One small section of wheat, on a little dogleg of my land, had escaped the storm. Wayne, Chase, and I wielded pitchforks to lift the bundles there—not nearly enough—onto the wagon. Leafie patiently fed small loads into the thresher. I had laid in a huge store of gunnysacks, hoping to fill them all with the threshed grain. Normally, Karl had said, it would take three men to keep up with the thresher’s output, filling the gunnysacks and stitching them with exactly seven stitches before tossing them onto the grain wagon. Today, thanks to the white reaper, Wayne Robbins alone could keep up with the task.

  Later, I wrote about it to Charlie: As I thanked my neighbors at the end of the day, I felt as if I was at a funeral. And in a way it was. A funeral for a dream. How could months of work be destroyed in a few minutes?

  After I finished the letter, I got out the ledger and turned to this month’s entry. I had been so smug with Traft the other day. When the hope of a harvest was in sight. Now I totted up numbers this way and that. No matter which way I did the math, I owed more than I’d make. Even with my newspaper money, I’d be in the hole. How was I going to repay the binders? The threshers? Mr. Nefzger for the fence IOU? And the seed? The only bright spot in the whole mess was that I wouldn’t have to make payment on the $100 war stamps pledge. And that only made me feel ashamed, not relieved.

  I brewed myself a cup of tea. Mr. Whiskers must’ve sensed how low I was feeling. He hopped up in my lap, purring his comfort and encouragement.

  “There’s a way.” I ran over the numbers one more time.

  “Besides Traft.” I scratched Mr. Whiskers behind the ears. I prayed. I quilted. And prayed some more. No answer came.

  As much as I wanted to throw myself a pity party, I couldn’t. I did my chores—tried to revive my sad little garden, cleaned the chicken coop, put a pot of beans on to simmer for supper. Mucking out the barn, I saw Uncle Chester’s chest. I put down the pitchfork and knelt in front of it, stroking the initials on the front. I leaned over, resting my cheek on the top of the chest, trying to draw comfort from it. Uncle Chester had believed in me. I’d believed in myself.

  “I need to know what to do.” I fiddled with the latches. “It’d break my heart—and yours—to sell out to Traft.” Wiping my eyes, I sat up and opened the trunk. Maybe I’d missed something the first time I’d gone through it. Maybe there was a stash of money in the linings for a time like this. Hadn’t he called himself a scoundrel? Didn’t scoundrels usually have ill-gotten gains lying around somewhere?

  This time I carefully inspected every inch of that chest. I took each item out, one by one, and set it next to me. When everything was out, I felt the lining, hoping to brush a secret trigger as I probed.

  There were no secret compartments, no secret stashes, to be found.

  It had been foolish even to hope, but desperation will make you believe almost anything. Carefully I replaced the contents in the trunk. As I set an old copy of The Last of the Mohicans back inside, I noticed something edged out, beyond the pages. I flipped the book open.

  “Oh!” I sat back on my haunches and stared into the photo in my hands. It was of my mother and my father. Mother held a baby in her lap—me. Another man stood back of Mother. I turned the photo over for an explanation. Me, Katherine, and Raymond with baby Hattie, January 1902. I stared into the face of that three-month-old infant. So sweet. So happy. So hopeful.

  Then I gazed into the faces of my parents. I could almost hear my mother singing to me and feel the tickle of my father’s beard against my cheek. I pressed my lips to the picture and held it there for several seconds.

  Then I looked at the other man. I knew, from the tight and slanted script on the back, who it was. Uncle Chester.

  I studied his face. Was there any hint of disappointment there? Blame? All I could see was a warm and encouraging smile. Maybe even an understanding smile. I carefully tucked the photograph back in the book. The remaining items were returned to the trunk. I closed it up and did the latches.

  “Thank you, Uncle Chester,” I whispered. Finding that photo today, on my lowest of days, was another one of Uncle Chester’s gifts.

  I only wish I knew what it meant.

  CHAPTER 20

  SEPTEMBER 1918

  * * *

  THE ARLINGTON NEWS

  Honyocker’s Homily ~ Matters of Age

  So much fuss about age! Men can enlist in the service at eighteen but cannot vote until age twenty-one. Women are thought old maids at twenty-four. My time on the prairie has shown me that age has very little to do with one’s mental acuity or physical ability. My “old hen” neighbor—her own label for herself—is sought after like a debutante at a grand ball for her horse-training skills. Rooster Jim claims to be “near to sixty” and he puts in days that would send a younger man straight to his bed. And the youngsters! Twelve-year-old girls drive wagons, and sixteen-year-old boys are left in charge of farms while their fathers go east for work. I myself have been under the able tutelage of a boy just turned nine; without Chase’s wisdom, I might not have made it through even my first day as a honyocker. It seems unfair not to give credit where credit is due simply because one lacks a certain number of candles on one’s birthday cake.

  * * *

  Every woman in the county—in the country—probably spent the same sleepless night I did on September 11. I finally gave up, got up, and made coffee. Too early even to do my chores, I drank the coffee black, sitting on my steps, watching the sky blush the palest pink.

  In a few hours, at 7 a.m., Registration Day would start, the third of the war. President Wilson was calling for thirteen million men, ages eighteen to forty-five, to enroll. “Let’s Finish What We Have Begun,” trumpeted the Herald. I sipped my coffee and thought about Mabel Ren. Elmer had already registered; would he be drafted, leaving her all alone with those six kids and that big farm? At least their crops were in.

  Mrs. Martin had asked for prayers on Sunday for those about to enlist. Sounded like she couldn’t hold Traft back any longer; he’d probably be the first in line.

  My mind brought up a picture of all the men from Vida who would be registering. I said a prayer for each of them by name, asking that if any of them got drafted, they would all come back to their homes and families. I thought of Charlie’s last letter. Perhaps he’d meant it to be light, but the story he related only added to my worries: I had a job a little out of the ordinary today. Was detailed to guard the target range. That is the target that the aeroplanes practice shooting at. One of the English chaps asked me if I had stood sentry before.
On my reply in the negative he said, “Don’t worry. The safest place is at the target.” Guess he doesn’t think much of the pilots’ aim! But at the end of the letter, he had drawn fifteen stars. I knew that meant he’d lost fifteen more comrades.

  I had tried to write about my conflicted feelings in the last Arlington News installment. Mr. Miltenberger sent it back to me. “Our readers want homestead stories,” he wrote, “not philosophy.” I’d quickly written up a piece about harvest and dutifully sent that in. The check arrived, so I guessed it passed muster.

  I leaned against the door frame. If I was this fatigued from one night’s loss of sleep, how did Charlie and the other soldiers feel, wakeful night after night after night?

  Fingers of deeper pink stretched across the sky. I couldn’t help but watch it turn from rose to red to purple to blue. Etched against that changing and endless sky, I saw an eagle. Its wings spread strong and wide, it flew lazy loops above the prairie. Suddenly it dived down, down, down. Then it rose sharply. Something—a sage hen?—was trapped in its talons. The eagle screamed to announce his success, then flew toward a distant butte. I strained to watch and finally lost it in the rising sun. A Sunday school verse came back to me: They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint. I stood up. Even though I was both weary and faint, I still had a horse to turn out to pasture and morning chores to do. And I would do them on two tired legs, not on eagle’s wings.