Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

by Leslie Tall Manning

  The average kid would turn ADHD in a place like this.

  I finished eyeing everything under the glass and started picking out a few things. Into my basket went a small soap that smelled like old lady perfume (anything was better than lye), a box of laundry soap flakes, a pumice stone for the calluses my palms were developing, and an orange wood stick for pushing back my cuticles. I gazed up at the hoop skirts again when I bumped into a crate filled with sheet music. I ruffled through the stack, reading the silly song titles under my breath: “Old Dan Tucker,” “Mary Blain,” “Gaily the Troubadour,” “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Miss Lucy Long.”

  As I finished reading through the ancient top ten Billboard list, I spotted something in the corner, sitting up high on a shelf. Something that made me forget there was anything else in the room. Up there on that shelf, like it had been waiting for me for over a century, sat a guitar. It was made of yellow wood, and smaller than the one Libby’s oldest brother let me tool around on. And it was beautiful.

  “Pretty guitar, huh?”

  I spun around to find a boy about my age, with a mop of dark hair and green eyes. He wore a large white apron—well, one that I assumed used to be white but was now spattered with who knew what—that fell below his knees, a white long-sleeved shirt with a pair of brown pants, those oh-so-popular suspenders, and boots. Fuzzy sideburns traveled along his jaw line like a couple of giant caterpillars.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  I looked back up at the guitar and spotted the camera in the corner to the right. Behind me, another camera hung from the ceiling by the front door. I didn’t have to know history to understand those glass eyes weren’t a true part of the 1800’s shopping experience.

  “You new in town?” the boy asked.

  “Two days ago,” I said.

  “You all come out here for the mining?”

  “Mining?” I laughed. But the boy didn’t see the humor in his question. “Oh. No. My Dad’s contract says he has to be a farmer.” I lowered my voice and rolled my eyes. “As part of the venture.”

  “Well, I guess living out here is an adventure. This is my family’s store. We’re the only mercantile for miles. So anything you need, just ask.” He pointed to a sign on the wall and read it out loud: “‘Your One-Stop Mercantile Shop.’”

  I checked to see if he was smiling. If maybe he was giving me a little wink to prove he was playing along for the sake of reality television; for the sake of the millions of viewers who watched more hours of cable than they spent outside. But the boy wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t winking. He just stood there like a nineteenth-century goofball.

  Well, then, fine. Acting all stupid and Laura Ingalls-like was better than being back at the cabin cleaning up horse crap and fetching water.

  I said, “What about a guitar pick, sayeth you, oh, kind gentleman?”

  The boy laughed.

  Goofball has a sense of humor after all.

  “Just use your fingers like I do.”

  “You play?”

  “Some.”

  The guitar stared down at me. “How much is it?”

  “Hey, Pa!” the boy shouted, making me jump. The man looked up from Dad’s supply list. “How much is the guitar?”

  “Four dollars fifty, son.” Then he said to my dad, “I try to get him to memorize the prices, but what can you do?”

  The boy shuffled his feet and chewed on the inside of his cheek.

  I cleared my throat. “Is four dollars and fifty cents a lot of money?”

  He shrugged. “For some it is.”

  Rebecca Lynn skipped up to me and held out her basket. “I got all this stuff for less than a dollar. I got twenty sticks of candy, a ball for Sully, a deck of cards, and a bag that smells like flowers. Smell it.” She held the sachet up to my nose. It smelled like a used dryer sheet. “Who are you?” she asked the boy.

  “My name’s Wendell. And you are?”

  “Rebecca Lynn. I’m ten. Brooke is sixteen.”

  “Seventeen in October,” I added.

  “We’re the same age,” Wendell told me as he brushed his thick hair from his forehead.

  I didn’t care how old he was. He smelled like hay and dirt, and his goofy smile seemed even goofier now that I knew his age.

  Dad walked over to us.

  “Mr. Murphy says to give him thirty minutes to gather the things on our list.” He extended his hand to Wendell. “I’m Tim Decker.”

  “Nice to meet you, sir. Wendell Lee Murphy.”

  “One of the sons in Murphy & Sons?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m the oldest of four.”

  I tried to picture the four of them at the Charlotte audition, wrestling each other, maybe singing a boy band tune for the producers.

  Rebecca Lynn said, “Look what I picked out, Daddy.”

  “Put them on the counter next to that crate.” He glanced at the things my basket. “You find everything you wanted?”

  “Are you kidding? I want everything in the store.”

  Wendell said, “Oh, this isn’t everything. We have a wish book you can order from. Might even have one of those picks you asked about.”

  “A pick?” Dad asked.

  “For the guitar.” I pointed to the instrument up on the shelf, staring at the camera, wondering if it was a live feed, if the producers in Los Angeles were watching us at this very moment. I was tempted to stick out my tongue, but with Dad and Wendell standing there, I decided against it.

  “We can’t afford a guitar, Brooke.”

  “But it’s only four-fifty—”

  “This is 1861. We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “The producers should have warned us we’d be the only ones starting from scratch.” I turned to Wendell. “At least you get to have a store. We got a shack and a barn.”

  “Brooke,” Dad said, grabbing my wrist. “This is neither the time nor place.” He let go and turned to Wendell. “Could you add some paper to our list? Maybe my daughter can let off some steam by writing letters.”

  “We can send letters?” I asked.

  “You can also get them,” Wendell said, pointing to a small sign over a doorway in the back of the store: Post Office.

  The only time I went to the mailbox back home was when Mom was too weak to make it to the end of the driveway. It seemed like she got a hundred cards a week. I would read them to her while she lay in bed, especially when her eyesight started to go. She said that was her favorite time of day, when I read her those cards. On the days when no cards came, I’d reread some of the best ones. I don’t think she ever noticed they were the same ones she’d heard a dozen times before.

  “You’ll need a quill and some ink,” Wendell said.

  “And a broom, please,” I said. If I wasn’t allowed to have the guitar, I may as well sweep to my heart’s content.

  “How much are the brooms?” Dad asked Wendell.

  “Thirty cents.”

  “We can’t afford one, Brooke—”

  “But a broom, Dad. I don’t have any other way to keep the cabin clean.”

  “If you want to give up some of the things in your basket…”

  I stared at the laundry flakes and the hand soap like they were my best friends. “I need these things.”

  Wendell took the basket from me. “You could always make a broom yourself. Plenty of branches and straw around.”

  “Good idea,” Dad said.

  I shot Wendell a “Thanks for nothing” look, but he had walked away to get us our letter-writing stuff, so the dirty look hit the back of his head.

  “Who wants to check out the town while we wait?” Dad asked.

  “I do!” Rebecca Lynn said, heading to the door.

  As I started out the door behind my sister and dad and Rusty, I glanced back at Wendell, standing behind the counter, adding up the things in my basket. He winked at me, like we suddenly shared a secret; one that said we totally agreed how lame all of this was. But then he rubbed his eye like there w
as dirt in it, and I shook my head as I left the store.

  Next door to the mercantile, we walked up the steps and into Murphy & Sons Tannery, where they carried saddles and chaps and cowboy hats. The camera panned my hand as it stroked the beautiful saddles. Rebecca Lynn laughed at the chaps. My dad tried on a cowboy hat, but it made him look like a dork.

  Next, we stopped in front of Wrightman’s Bakery and Confectionary. Cake plates sat in neat rows in the window below beautifully scripted signs: Delectable Chocolates! Sugar Cookies! Fruit Pies! We stepped through the doorway simultaneously breathing a loud “Ahhhh.” Just smelling the baked goods made me feel more lucid.

  In front of the counter, a woman stood with twin girls around Rebecca Lynn’s age. The mother was being handed a package by the plump older lady behind the counter. The older lady had a streak of flour across her cheek and globs of chocolate on her apron.

  Rebecca Lynn went up to the little girls. “What did you get?”

  “A peach pie,” the first little girl said. “For Sunday supper.”

  “You eat pie for supper?”

  “It’s for after supper.”

  “I live up that road,” my sister said, pointing.

  “Us too,” said the second little girl. “We got a tobacky farm.”

  “We got a cow and a pig and some chickens,” Rebecca Lynn said.

  The child’s mother finished paying at the counter. When she turned around, I noticed her perfect posture, and that she wore her corset. I stood up straighter.

  “I’m Mrs. Duffy,” she said. “And these are my girls, Beth and Tina.”

  “Tim Decker,” Dad said. “These are my daughters, Brooke and Rebecca Lynn.”

  Mrs. Duffy smiled politely at the three of us and turned to the woman behind the counter. “Thank you, Mrs. Wrightman.”

  She nodded to us as she and her children left the bakery. I was impressed with how everyone seemed oblivious to the fat man following us around with a camera in our faces.

  “Good morning,” Mrs. Wrightman said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Can I get you some cookies? Or perhaps the children would like some treacle.”

  “What’s treacle?” I asked.

  “Taffy.”

  Try to get taffy out of my teeth with my Jurassic toothbrush? I’d bleed to death.

  We chose a strawberry pie and three freshly baked croissants.

  “That will be twenty-eight cents, please.”

  I was used to seeing Dad’s fat wallet, with his credit cards and driver’s license and wad of bills. But out here, he carried a small leather bag filled with coins.

  We ate our croissants as we strolled along the wooden sidewalk and peeked through the window of the sheriff’s office. A man with white hair and a white moustache curled up at the edges sat at a desk reading something with a magnifying glass. I spotted the star-shaped badge on his vest. Behind him, a red, white, and blue flag with a circle of nine stars hung from a pole. Across the room sat an empty jail cell straight out of Mayberry.

  “Don’t want to get in no kinds of trouble ‘round here, pardner,” Dad said, trying too hard to sound like John Wayne or some other dead cowboy.

  Rusty went inside the sheriff’s office while we continued down the plank sidewalk. The blacksmith shop stood a few yards beyond the sheriff’s office, and finally the carriage works. That was it. That was the town. Aside from all the stuff to check out at Murphy & Sons, there wasn’t much more to see here than back at our homestead.

  “This is just like a real town,” Rebecca Lynn said.

  “A real lame town,” I said, popping the last bit of flaky croissant into my mouth.

  “You have to stop saying things like that, Brooke,” Dad said, his voice low. “We have no idea how many cameras there are, maybe hidden in places we aren’t aware of.”

  “Like in our outhouse?” I said it jokingly, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I wondered if it was possible, or even legal.

  “It doesn’t matter where they are, or where we think they are. If we stay in character all the time, it’ll be a lot easier to forget we’re being taped at all.”

  Back in front of Murphy & Sons, Rebecca Lynn gave the last of her croissant to Willow while Dad and I sat a porch bench until our order was filled.

  “Mr. Decker,” Wendell said, poking his head through the doorway. “My pa is ready for you. I’ll put the things in your wagon while you settle up.”

  Inside the store, Mr. Murphy handed Dad a slip of paper. “Shall I put your things on credit?” he asked.

  “Is that customary?”

  “A man’s word is his bond.”

  “I think I’ll stick with cash for now.”

  Mr. Murphy helped Dad count out stacks of coins before we headed out of the store. Rusty was already sitting on the buckboard when my sister climbed into the back. As Wendell put the last of our items in the wagon, he held out his hand to me. His grip was strong, his hand calloused.

  “Thanks,” I said, lowering myself onto the floor among the packages.

  “See you at church tomorrow.”

  Dad backed Willow out of the parking space and did a decent job not running over anyone.

  As we left the tiny town, I looked back to see Wendell standing in the shade of the storefront porch, his arms crossed like one of those wooden Indians in front of a tobacco shop.

  Rusty sat next to my dad, filming behind us as we made our way up the rise. I thought of the woman who ran the bakery; Mrs. Duffy with her twin daughters; Mr. Murphy and Wendell; the Millers with their snotty daughter; even the slave girl, Nanny. All of these people fit into this made-up town perfectly, like Cinderella’s slipper when it slides onto her tiny foot.

  As we made our bumpy way back to the cabin, it seemed like everything I’d done before coming on this venture was a dream. That all the chores, the people of Sweet Sugar Gap, the wagon trip to and from the miniature town, was real, and I didn’t understand how this could be. It made my brain sizzle just to think about it. So I scolded myself for being unfair to my real life, my real friends. I was being unfair to the modern world I’d left behind. I might not have electricity, or normal clothes, or the computers and things I used to have, but I would only be pretending I was one of these people. Wendell and his fuzzy sideburns. Who the hell would grow those things just for fun? Prudence, with her hoop skirt and nasty attitude. And Nanny, pretending to be a slave, for God’s sake. They could buy into this bullshit town as much as they wanted. Just a bunch of people who auditioned that day out in Charlotte, an audition that seemed ages ago, in a city that seemed as far away as the moon.

  Even if I performed for the camera the way everyone expected me to, I would secretly and constantly remind myself I was not and never would be one of them; that I hated it out here in the sticks, and I didn’t give a double fother mucker about ratings or Hollywood or the people of Sweet Sugar Gap.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Dad shook me awake, I heard tapping on the roof, like a squirrel was sprinkling tiny nuts all over it.

  “We’ll be late for church,” he said, pulling up his suspenders.

  “Why didn’t that stupid rooster wake us up?”

  Rebecca Lynn mumbled from her side of the bed, “His name is Clyde.”

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  “Rain,” Dad said.

  As soon as he made his way down the ladder, Rebecca Lynn and I dressed.

  “I don’t want to wear my dress to church,” she said. “It’s dirty.”

  “Dad!” I shouted downstairs. “We don’t have anything nice to wear!”

  “God doesn’t care how you dress!” he shouted back.

  “But it’s raining,” I said, trying not to whine like my sister, but finding it hard not to.

  Without a response, the back door opened and shut, and I knew he’d left to use the outhouse. I remembered the pretty parasols hanging at Murphy & Sons and wished I’d bought one of those instead of old lady soap. I didn’t own a shawl or a
fancy bonnet, and wished I’d bought those as well. I only had my work clothes, my work boots, my dirty nails, and my greasy hair.

  I put on my dress and turned my apron inside out so the dirt and food stains weren’t so obvious. When I slid on my boots, I spotted greenish mold clinging to the leather. I tried to help my sister with her bonnet, but she grumpily pushed my hands away. “I can do it myself.”

  Rebecca Lynn finished dressing and headed downstairs; I stayed behind to put on some makeup. Maybe my disgusting clothes would be less noticeable if my face didn’t suck. In the nearly dark room with the tiny mirror hanging from a nail, I dabbed on some blush and mascara before tucking the items back in the corner of the ceiling. I grabbed my bonnet and headed downstairs.

  Breakfast was a stale scone with butter, an apple, and some coffee—unburned, I will add.

  “Tend to the animals before we leave,” Dad said. He put on his shirt over the dirty long underwear and wrapped a strange detached collar around his neck. His fuzzy face needed a shave. I’d never seen my dad with facial hair before, but here he was, looking almost cool, like a drummer in an Indie band.

  Rebecca Lynn grabbed a cup of feed and ran out to the coop. Sully, wet and muddy from the rain, followed. I ran through the drizzle to the barn where Gretchen stood inside, waiting for me, and put the bucket under her. Afterward, I was sure she gave me a smile of relief. I patted her on the head.

  As I headed toward the springhouse, the heavy bucket banging against my thigh, my feet slipped out from under me. For some reason I held onto the milk bucket instead of letting my hands catch my fall. Onto my rear I fell, like stupid-ass Jill who tumbles down the hill after Jack. I sat there in the rain, shaking my head as milk soaked through the front of my dress and wet mud seeped through the back.