Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

by Leslie Tall Manning

  “Do you think we’ll make some friends?”

  I shrugged.

  “You might meet someone like Libby.”

  “Doubt it.”

  She held the front of her dress in a bunch as she hopped over the ruts.

  “My feet hurt, Brooke.”

  “Mine do too.” I had already tripped a few times, much to the pleasure of our cameramen. Out of spite, I decided not to fall anymore.

  “Tell Daddy to let us sit in the wagon,” Rebecca Lynn said.

  “We’ve only been walking a little while.”

  “You promised to tell him when I got tired.”

  I hiked my skirts up to my knees and jogged up to the front.

  “Dad!” I called.

  Pete helped Dad stop the horse.

  “Something the matter?” Dad asked.

  “Rebecca Lynn’s tired. She wants to know if she can climb up there with you.”

  Pete said, “Not while I help your father handle the horse for the first time.”

  “Can she sit in the back?”

  Pete took off his hat and repositioned it on his head. “Up to you, Mr. Decker.”

  Dad jumped to the ground, moved some of the packages around in the back, and helped Rebecca Lynn into the wagon. She squeezed in between the bags and boxes like a seventy-pound sack of potatoes.

  “Sorry there’s not more room, Brooke,” Dad said as he climbed back onto the front seat.

  “How much farther?”

  “Four miles,” Pete said. “But we’ll be stopping in a little while next to a creek. We can have lunch there.”

  The fact that I didn’t faint was a tent-revival miracle. I didn’t have my vitamin water or my Gatorade, and I had to pee so badly I thought my head would explode. Just when I was contemplating throwing myself in front of the wagon, we came to a place where ancient tree branches hung over the road in wide arches.

  “Creek’s up here,” Pete said as he helped Dad steer the wagon to the side of the road. The sound of the babbling brook made my bladder cringe.

  “I have to pee,” I told Dad, running into the thick trees.

  I ran until I could no longer see the horse, yanked up my dress, and stood with my feet wide apart. Within seconds I was filled with the kind of relief that only peeing can give a person.

  As I squatted, I gazed up into the trees. A small stream of light made its way through a tiny crack in the canopy and fell across my face. When my bladder was finally empty, I didn’t move. I realized I had nothing to wipe myself with. In a panic, I checked out my surroundings. Leaves were all around me, but I didn’t know the difference between any of them. I knew the saying, “Leaves of three, let them be,” but what if there were bugs on the safe leaves? Or microscopic things that were smaller than bugs? I nearly shouted for Rebecca Lynn but was afraid that Rusty or Carl might think there was something out here worth filming.

  Then I remembered what I had in my sleeve. I pulled out the handkerchief and thanked Martha under my breath. When I was through, I stepped away from the muddy puddle, gently folded the hanky, and tucked it in my apron pocket, where the iPod and my eyebrow ring still hid in the bottom.

  Dad, Pete, and Rebecca Lynn were sitting on a large blanket near the stream. Carl was filming the picnic and Rusty stood by the wagon eating a power bar.

  “Going to wash my hands,” I said. I knelt down by the creek’s edge and rinsed out my hanky in the cold water. Once it was washed, I brought it back to the wagon and hung it over the side to dry.

  The chicken was wonderful. And so was the peach.

  I was ready to relax, cool off my screaming feet in the stream, let my tired legs rest a while. But we had barely finished our lunch when Pete said, “Time to mosey. Gotta get you settled before bedtime.”

  “Bedtime?” I asked. I could tell by the sun’s position it wasn’t even noon yet.

  “You’ll be retiring when the sun goes down.”

  I laughed. “Why would we go to bed so early?”

  “No lights.”

  “What about candles?” Dad asked.

  “Sure, you got candles. And oil lamps. But you don’t want to be using them up the second you all get to your homestead. You’ll want to save ‘em for a rainy day. Besides, you’ll want to go to bed early. In 1861, everyone in the backcountry did.”

  We finished our lunch, buried our chicken bones in the dirt like Pete showed us, and washed up in the creek. Within minutes, we resumed our trek, Dad and Pete handling the reins, Rebecca Lynn gripping that ugly doll in the back of the wagon, Rusty and Carl in their hiking boots trailing close behind, and me, growing more apprehensive with each step I took, kicking up dirt as I worked to keep up with the wagon.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  What amazed me most as we rounded the last bend were the white balls of fluff covering the hillside.

  “Sheep!” Rebecca Lynn called out.

  The breeze brought the bleating right to my ears.

  “Your place is up here a quarter mile,” Pete said. “It’s a big homestead. You all can’t miss it.”

  Like Super Mario, I shuffled back and forth behind the moving wagon so I could see what Pete was talking about. My stomach fluttered more than ever as I caught sight of the house on the hill in the distance, the sun shining over it like a spotlight. “Look at me, Brooke!” it seemed to shout. “I’m your new home!” And what a palace it was! The grand house was painted light blue—the same color as my bedspread back home—with black shutters and a silver tin roof. I counted two chimneys, but I was certain there were more on the other side I couldn’t see. A wraparound porch swept across the front and sides like a petticoat, and a long dirt road led up to it through a grove of giant pecan trees. I looked at my dirty shoes and ugly dress. No way was I going to wear this old rag in a beautiful house like that. I wondered briefly if the sewing machine had been invented yet. Either way, it didn’t matter. If I could sew a pillow by hand, I could stitch my way through a few dresses.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Pete said, “There she is. In all her glory.”

  Dad slowed the horse down and parked the wagon in the shade of some broadleaved trees.

  “Let’s go up the driveway,” I said. If someone had told me I’d be jumping with excitement at any given time on this venture, I would have called them whacko. But here I was, tingling from my bonnet to my pointy shoes.

  I took the lead. If they wanted to sit on the dirt road all day, so be it. I, for one, was tired of walking. I was ready to stretch out on that wonderful plantation porch, put up my throbbing feet, and drink sweet tea with fresh lemon.

  The sheep on the hill let out the occasional bleep as they chewed the grass. This didn’t seem so bad. The sheep fed themselves. So I’d be collecting a few eggs, and making butter every once in a while. So what? Maybe I could learn to live without NCIS and Facebook after all. Maybe…

  Dad and Pete jumped onto the road and stood next to each other on the other side of the wagon. Why weren’t they over here with me? Why was I still alone on the driveway?

  They weren’t even looking in the right direction. They were looking in the opposite direction, as a matter of fact. I walked around the back of the wagon. My eyes tried to see what they were seeing, but all I could make out was a tilted cabin sitting on the left side of a wide clearing the size of a football field. A long log fence, the beams crisscrossed like the fences in the Gettysburg battlefields, divided the property from the road. Someone had tried to make the shack seem fancier than it was by adding a swinging gate with a trellis above. Wild roses grew up and over the trellis.

  Unfortunately, this Curb Appeal addition only made the cabin look worse. A few other rickety buildings were scattered across the property, and a thick spooky forest hugged the back and sides in a semicircle. To the right of the shack, a collection of tree stumps covered the earth like round wooden seats, and next to one of them sat a large wood pile with an ax stuck in the middle of a log, like someone had been chopping moments before
we arrived. I had just stepped into Middle-earth. I waited for a hobbit or an elf to come skipping out of the trees.

  “Did you girls think it would be this perfect?” Dad asked.

  What’s perfect?

  “Help me down, Brooke,” Rebecca Lynn said.

  I didn’t take my eyes off the building—if you could call it a building—even as I helped my sister onto the ground.

  “Dad,” I said, laughing nervously. “That’s not our house. Our house is up there. The one on the hill.”

  “No, darling,” Pete said, shaking his head and smiling sadly.

  Oh my God, he just gave me a pity smile!

  Rusty shoved his camera in my face. With my hand I tried to shoo him away like the flies buzzing around my bonnet. Carl stood next to the road, filming the shack and the grounds.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “This is your house,” Pete said.

  I didn’t have anything against log cabins. I’d even stayed in a few while skiing in Aspen, or on family vacations in the Appalachians. But those cabins were huge, and perfectly built. They came with gorgeous wrought iron lights, awesome kitchens, manicured hedges, comfy porch furniture, and hot tubs.

  This thing was made by a mentally challenged giant with oversized Lincoln logs. The front had a crooked door in its center, and one glassless window on the left had shutters that would probably turn to sawdust if you forced them closed. And something told me the nearest hot tub was a hundred miles from here. Not to mention a hundred years.

  “My bedroom is bigger than that,” I said, holding on to the edge of the wagon, not brave enough to step any closer.

  No one responded.

  “I’m claustrophobic.” I placed a hand on my chest for emphasis. “I’ll suffocate in there.”

  My imaginary plight was ignored.

  “How far from town are we?” Dad asked.

  Pete said, pointing with his thumb, “About five miles.”

  Five miles?

  “Sweet Sugar Gap,” Dad said like he was cooing over a newborn baby. “Our new home.”

  “Sweet Sugar Crap,” I said under my breath.

  Rebecca Lynn heard me and grabbed onto Dad’s hand as the two of them followed Pete through the squealing gate.

  In a daze I trailed behind them, and the cameramen behind me. My lip trembled and my throat grew tighter with each step through the dirt yard. I glanced up at the pretty house on the hill, then back to the shack. Our shack.

  “Just look at those logs,” Dad said in wonder. “They’re hand-hewn.”

  “What’s that mean?” Rebecca Lynn asked.

  “The logs were shaped by hand, with the hard blows of an ax or chisel.”

  “How do you know?” I asked in a pissy voice.

  “I did some research like the producer suggested.”

  “I looked up chickens, Daddy,” Rebecca Lynn said. “Only hens lay eggs.”

  I hadn’t bothered to do any research. What was the point? All the research in the world wouldn’t have turned this dead gray shack into a pretty blue mansion.

  “I’m glad you know about chickens,” Pete told my sister. “We got y’all six laying hens.”

  “What about the other animals?” she asked.

  “They’ll be delivered in the morning.” Pete nodded toward the roof. “Got some strong cypress shingles there, Tim.”

  “It even has a front porch,” Dad said, like he’d just discovered a pot of gold and not a crooked porch that made me lean a little to the left like I’d smoked some bad weed.

  “The chinking has been done for you, so you don’t have to fill the cracks yourself,” Pete said, leading us toward the back of the building. “Got a nice stone chimney as well.”

  The chimney leaned almost as badly as the porch, only in the opposite direction. I stared at the gray flat stones piled one on top of another. It wasn’t nice at all. Actually, it sucked. The cabin was the complete opposite of the blue palace on the hill. It was as gray and foul as a rat and squatted there in the grass like it was taking a dump. I was suddenly caught in the middle of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, standing in front of the same house where the mean old witch bakes little children in an oven.

  Then the sour smell came to me, swirling around my head and thrusting its way through me. When I was out cruising with my friends I didn’t mind it so much, because it made me think of fresh vegetables and summer vacation. But with that rancid odor so close to what Pete was calling our house, I wanted to toss my cookies right there.

  “Where are the chickens?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “Just over there,” Pete said, nodding in the direction of the barn which sat only a few yards from the house. “So you won’t have to go too far to collect your eggs.”

  I put a hand against my nose and tried to keep my lunchtime peach from climbing into my throat.

  “I can’t wait to see the inside,” Dad said, as he and Pete headed up the tilted steps and onto the front porch. Rebecca Lynn skipped behind them. I didn’t feel my feet move as my boots thumped against the rat-shack steps.

  Pete opened the front door.

  “Wow,” Rebecca Lynn said, running into the cabin.

  I followed the three of them inside, and Rusty followed behind me. Carl stayed out on the road.

  The rectangular room was a dark cave, about sixteen feet wide by twenty feet deep. The low ceiling and walls were made of rough beams, extending from front to back.

  “Pine and cypress,” Pete said, as if telling us the names of trees would make the room look better.

  In the room’s center sat a long table with a bench and two chairs. Along the left wall hung long shelves lined with tin plates and cups, mixing bowls, lanterns, skillets, glass containers, and utensils straight out of a torture chamber. On the right was a low wood counter that ran half the length of the wall. Under the counter sat a large wooden bucket, and on top sat a pile of white linens, neatly folded. Above the counter was a second window matching the glassless one facing the front. A third window sat directly across the room from the counter.

  I ruffled through the pile of linens. They felt coarse, like they were made of burlap.

  Pete walked to the other end of the room. “Here’s your fireplace, also known as your oven.”

  The fireplace took up most of the back wall and sat square in the center, with the stones climbing up to the ceiling. A rickety stool sat on either side. A long-barreled gun hung over the mantel. On top of the mantel lay a Bible.

  “This is where you girls’ll be spending a large part of your time,” Pete informed us, “cooking your meals and boiling water.”

  “Boiling water?” I asked, staring at the fireplace’s cold mouth.

  “For cooking and doing laundry, mostly.”

  “Where’s our bathtub?” I asked.

  “Nature is your tub. Stream’s thataway.” He pointed his thumb in a direction behind the house.

  While Pete showed my dad the details of the room, I spotted a wooden ladder in the corner to the right of the fireplace. Rebecca Lynn came over to where I stood with a foot on the bottom rung, peering up into the dark.

  “What’s up there?” she whispered.

  “How should I know?”

  I pulled my skirts into one hand and slowly climbed the ladder. I stuck my head through the rectangular hole at the top. The ceiling up there was the actual roofline, so the only place to stand without whacking my head was in the center of the small room. On the floor sat two boxes low to the ground, a single mattress shoved into one, and a full-size in the other. I was older and taller, so I chose the bigger one. Each bed was positioned under the low slanted eaves and covered with a checkered quilt and flat pillows. Thin streams of light seeped in through tiny fissures in the walls and spilled across the beds. A square hole used as a window sat just above the bed I chose for Rebecca Lynn.

  My makeup was jabbing me under the corset. I pulled out the tiny containers and hid them in a dark corner where one of the beams
met the roofline, then put the iPod next to it. I took the hoop ring and gently laid it beside the iPod. I readjusted my dress, pushed the bonnet from my head, and let it fall along the back of my neck. It was hot up in the attic. And beyond stuffy. And it smelled like squirrel pee.

  “Well?” Rebecca Lynn asked from below.

  “Well, what?”

  “I want to come up.”

  “So? No one’s stopping you.”

  “That the bedroom?” I heard Dad say from somewhere downstairs.

  Won’t be any secrets in this house, I thought.

  “Yes,” Pete told him.

  Next thing I knew, the four of us were clustered in the tiny attic. Rebecca Lynn and I each sank down a few inches when we tried out the uncomfortable mattresses, and Dad and Pete stood hunched over like they had severe cases of scoliosis. Rusty stood on the top step, filming us.

  Dad said, “Not too bad.”

  “Where are you going to sleep?” I asked Dad, for a moment feeling sorry he might have to sleep in one of the outbuildings, or on the floor downstairs.

  Pete laughed. “Your dad will be sleeping up here. With you girls. You’re sitting on his bed, Brooke.”

  “What? No way. We can’t share a bedroom. Dad…”

  Dad said, “This is how they did it back in the day.”

  Rebecca Lynn said, “It’ll be like a slumber party.”

  I know there’s really no comparison, but for a moment I was reminded of Anne Frank.

  “You might want to put a piece of fabric or cheesecloth in your window there,” Pete said. “Will keep down on the flies and other vermin.”

  “What other vermin?” I asked, horrified of what might creep into our room while we slept.

  “Mice…bats…”

  “Daddy,” Rebecca Lynn whined.

  “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of it.”

  Dad’s forehead was crinkled, and part of me was satisfied to see him worried. But another part of me didn’t like that look at all. It was a look I’d seen twenty-four-seven when Mom was sick; a look that said he didn’t have any control over the situation.

  By the time we had climbed back down the ladder, I was sweating profusely. My antiperspirant had worn off, and I hadn’t snuck any in. I was so worried about my face, I hadn’t thought about the way I might smell.