Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

by Leslie Tall Manning

  “With what money? It would have taken you until next year to pay for it.”

  “How dare you judge what I can or can’t afford.”

  “If you listen to me, you’ll understand—”

  “I hate you. First you treat me like I’m manure on your shoe, and then you talk me into making a trade…”

  “The trade was your idea.”

  “Yeah? Well. I saw the way you and Nanny were laughing together, so don’t hand me any more crap about being true to your backstory.”

  Prudence said nothing.

  “I want my guitar back,” I said. “You can keep Wendell. How’s that for a trade?”

  “Maybe you should tell him yourself.”

  Wendell appeared in the doorway next to Prudence. I was reminded of a Civil War painting I’d seen once of a young girl and boy, comatose faces, their round glasslike eyes staring out from the frame.

  “Brooke,” Wendell said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I should be asking you that question.”

  “Our family was invited to dinner.”

  “And it was so easy to say yes.”

  Wendell said to Prudence, “Can you leave us alone?”

  Prudence glared at me before she spun on her heels in a huff and stormed back into the parlor.

  Wendell came onto the porch.

  “You knew I wanted that guitar,” I said. “You said someone bought it. Why do you have it? And why were you playing it for her?”

  “I bought the guitar.”

  “What?”

  “As a gift.”

  “For Prudence?”

  He laughed. “No. For you.”

  “Liar. You bought it for her. So I’d get angry, and I’d have one more reason to leave. You want me to leave. Of course you do. You want my family to get kicked out of Sweet Sugar Gap, so your family can get the money—”

  “I bought the guitar for you. You can ask my father. I’ve been working extra hours at the store to pay for it.”

  “Why? Why would you do that for me?”

  “I knew you couldn’t afford it.”

  “You felt sorry for me?”

  “I bought it so you’d have something to do out here besides complain.”

  Dang. A bullet to the heart. Is that how he saw me? As a big-time Debbie Downer?

  “What about Prudence?” I asked.

  “What about her?”

  “You were having a pretty good time in there. The way you were laughing, and playing music together…”

  “That’s what families do in this era. They sing and laugh, tell stories, play games. I wanted to practice before I gave it to you. You. Not her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Here we were, standing on Prudence Miller’s porch, and Wendell was offering me both the guitar and himself at the same time.

  “I want to teach you some songs,” he said, handing me the instrument. The neck was warm. “Modern, 1800’s songs.”

  I hugged the instrument to my chest. “So, you’re sure about this? About me?”

  “I’ve known since before you ever came into our store.”

  “How?”

  “Our family was the first to arrive. When I heard there was a girl moving here who was my age, I pictured you in my mind. And here you are.”

  “Why didn’t you picture Prudence?”

  “I did. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  My sister appeared at the door. “Look, Brooke.” She stepped onto the porch and tried to spin around in the long yellow dress, but it fell off her shoulders and bunched into a pile on the floor. “It’s too big, but I told Mrs. Miller you could make it fit me. Can you?”

  “I can try.” I handed Rebecca Lynn the lantern from the step. “It’s getting late. We should be getting home.” Something inside me whispered that last word over again, for the first time without grief; a whisper that actually brought me comfort: Home.

  Wendell walked us to the gate. He leaned toward me and kissed my cheek. He had forgiven me. Had chosen me. We hugged goodnight, and I carried the guitar with one hand and the back of my sister’s dress with the other like a wedding train, as we made our way down the hill, back to our little homestead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  My life became that of a true blue Ingalls girl. I awoke every morning without the aid of Cuckoo Bird Clyde, whose cock-a-doodle-doo seemed to be busted half the time. Rebecca Lynn and I had the eggs collected and the animals fed before Dad came down for breakfast, and even though we were getting low on provisions, our crops were popping up like trees in a miniature train set. Baking bread and biscuits got easier, I never tired of eating freshly plucked apples and blackberries, and I hadn’t burned the coffee since day one.

  Mr. Murphy told Wendell he could stock shelves on Sundays after the picnic so he could visit me most weeknights. Sometimes he’d stay for dinner, other times he’d come in time for dessert. Somehow we made our food stretch enough for four.

  To add to the table, Wendell brought bouquets of wildflowers—daisies were my favorite—or delicious pies his mother baked. After dinner, he told jokes about the fake war. He was so cute, sitting at the table with the firelight bouncing against his happy face, sharing stories he’d read in a journal at the store.

  “A soldier, who was drunk all the time, made an announcement to the men in his company that he was swearing off drinking and told the soldiers they should quit, too. The other soldiers deliberately tried to get him to fall off the wagon by giving him whiskey every night. But every morning, the soldier would preach that alcohol was a sin. Finally, a friend said, ‘You should give up the preaching, because you always end up drunk by the end of the day.’ The soldier said, ‘What? And give up all that free whiskey?’”

  I laughed at all of his jokes, even if I didn’t get the punch line.

  After the dishes were washed, and Dad and Rebecca Lynn sat at the table playing cards, Wendell and I would hang out on the front porch rockers, staring at the night sky, hooting each time a shooting star whizzed across the black, or naming the frogs whose croaks we started to recognize.

  And, as promised, he taught me songs on the guitar.

  “Place your fingers like this,” he’d say patiently with his fingers on top of mine to help locate the right chords. Sometimes while I played, Wendell would cup my cheek with a callused hand. My fingers would shake, and the lyrics would momentarily get stuck in my throat.

  Rusty hung around every night, so Wendell and I got smart. We’d say goodbye next to the gate, and he’d hop onto his wagon and head over the hill. It didn’t take but ten minutes for Rusty to become bored with the Decker Family After-dinner Entertainment Hour. As soon as he left for the Millers’ place, Wendell would come back over the rise, and the rest of the evening was ours. Even in Yesterday World, kids knew how to pull one over.

  By myself, I hadn’t explored anything beyond our end of the stream, and it was hard to do in the dark, but Wendell and I discovered that our path continued to the other side of the creek, leading to a clearing with a pool the size of a small pond which always seemed to lie directly beneath the moon. We sat on the clay ledge beside the cool water, took our shoes and socks off, and let our feet dangle over the side. Fish tickled my feet.

  “Trout,” Wendell said.

  I wiggled my toes and laughed as the fish swam around my ankles.

  Beside the pool, the mosquitoes were fierce. My long dress and high shoes saved my legs, but I got countless bites on my face and the backs of my hands. Wendell brought me a jar of citronella oil from the store, and it didn’t smell half as bad as the spray stuff they sell in Modern Land. Once he rubbed the oil on my clothes and hair, the bugs didn’t come around at all. He also gave me a plant from his mother’s garden.

  “Rub a basil leaf on the bites.”

  I was skeptical at first, but within hours the itching had stopped. “How did you know this would work?”

  “My mother is into natural remedies.”

  As we sat one nigh
t with our feet dangling in the dark cool water of the pool, I shimmied close to him. I lay my head on his shoulder and whispered, “I am so happy right now.”

  And then came the moment of truth.

  He turned me toward him, grabbed my face in his hands, and planted a sweet wet kiss smack dab on my lips. I’d had lots of first kisses, but this one was the best by far. As our mouths opened against one another’s, I could taste his minty tongue. It was all I could do not to devour him, right there on the bank. But he wanted to lead, so I let him.

  Nearly every night we kissed under the moon with our arms around each other like we were sitting in the bleachers at a football game. Dad’s constant warnings about hidden cameras frightened me, but as long as we were doing what came naturally, I didn’t care. Girls and boys kissed in the 1800s. There was no way around it. And they probably started kissing a lot sooner, because people didn’t live so long back then. They had to get started early.

  The watering hole became our spot. Maybe it was the glow of the moon that never seemed to fade, the nights that were breezy and cool, or the sunsets that turned the sky into a museum painting; maybe it was the chickens who seemed to enjoy laying eggs for me, the way Willow nuzzled me each time I entered the corral, or the fact that my skin hadn’t seen a pimple in weeks. I’m not really sure. Whatever it was out here in God’s Country, out here in this made-up Hollywood town called Sweet Sugar Gap, I was falling hard for Wendell.

  I wanted to tell him how I felt. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to stand up in church after the final hymn and tell the congregation. But knowing we were all just characters on a reality show, all of us vying for a million-dollar prize, I couldn’t get myself to tell him just how hard I was tumbling.

  It was a good thing we liked to kiss, because our conversations were limited. I couldn’t share any of the things I knew before we’d met. I could not discuss my favorite modern books, like The Hunger Games or Thirteen Reasons, or classics like To Kill a Mockingbird or Dandelion Wine; or movies, since films hadn’t been invented yet; or current events, unless you counted the “current” war. We couldn’t discuss what I knew about science, like Pluto being demoted from planet to non-planet, the fact that I had seen Saturn’s rings through a high-power telescope, or the theory of worm holes, which fascinated me. I wanted to brag about all the cutting-edge cancer treatments my mother had tried, but penicillin hadn’t been discovered yet. I couldn’t mention anything in history that happened between 1861 and the present day, from technology to fashion, laptops to thong bikinis.

  It was frustrating to be with someone I was crazy about, but not have him know the real me. What Wendell was seeing was a modern girl, not a girl who lived over a hundred years ago. He didn’t have a clue what kind of car I drove, about the panther tattoo on my lower back, or the awesome concerts I’d snuck out to see with Libby and her brothers. He knew nothing about my real house, my real friends, my real life. He only saw who I was now: a plain-faced, hairy-legged girl, barely a doppelganger of my other self. He ate my baked goods, drank my strong coffee, and complimented me on my sewing. He watched me ride Willow, balance on a log that stretched across the creek, and mend holes in my dad’s wool socks.

  I wanted to ask Wendell what his favorite bands were. We were stuck playing old music from his song book, filled with tunes about farmers and fair maidens and flags. I learned these songs for the sake of the show, and the money we could receive, should we make it to the end. And, of course, I was doing it for Wendell, who seemed to like the girl I was here and now, without knowing or asking about the girl I was before. All of this made me like him even more.

  I was falling headfirst. Turning cartwheels in my Laura Ingalls dress down a wheat-covered hill. Spiraling out of control like a hyperactive girl who forgot to stick on her medication patch.

  And because this was show business, the cameras would be there to witness the plunge, whether my dive was a perfect ten or a complete fail.

  On the Fourth of July, we sat on the hill behind the church. Fireworks exploded into the air from a barge down on the river. Like the circus, the Independence Day celebration brought strangers from miles around, and we sat on blankets among dozens of spectators. The fireworks were mostly the colors of the American flag, and cast brilliant light against the dark sky that was probably seen from every hilltop in the Tar Heel State.

  Prudence, who sat nearby between her brothers, glanced in our direction during the show, the colorful lights hardly brightening her sad face.

  “I feel sorry for her,” I told Wendell.

  A little bit, anyway. Without me, she had no girlfriends. And without Wendell, she was definitely having less fun than me.

  “She has enough in that big house to keep her happy” was his answer.

  I was no longer jealous of her house or her toys or her dresses. What’s funny is, I didn’t have much, and yet I had everything I needed. I had three square meals, crops growing that my father had planted himself, a beautiful stream to bathe in, and a hottie holding my hand.

  After the finale, everyone gathered up their blankets. After dropping Wendell off at his house behind the store—and sneaking a quick peck in the dark—I rode home in the back of our wagon with my sister, who fell asleep by the time we reached the schoolhouse. It was late, around ten o’clock, and the road was dark and eerie with barely a sliver of moonlight. The Millers rode in front of us, and our wagons moved slowly because of the shadowed ruts. We stayed directly behind them, since they carried two lanterns inside mirrored boxes, and we only had two small lamps.

  As we made our way to the bottom of the Miller’s driveway, a man’s dark figure appeared in the road. He stood next to a horse and held a white sheet in his hand, waving it like a surrender flag. “Mr. Miller! Mr. Miller!”

  “Josiah?” Mr. Miller called out.

  We stopped our wagon. Rebecca Lynn woke up.

  “It’s Mrs. Miller!” Josiah shouted. “She having the baby!”

  “Is Doctor Hensel with her?” Mr. Miller asked.

  “No, sir. He still at the fireworks.”

  “Josiah,” he ordered calmly, “get on down to the doctor’s place. Wait for him there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Josiah jumped on his horse and continued down the road.

  Mr. Miller’s voice took on a solemn tone as it broke through the darkness. “Brooke, you need to come with us.”

  “What?”

  “We need as many hands as possible.”

  “Dad?”

  “Do as he asks, Brooke.”

  I jumped out of the wagon, climbed into Mr. Miller’s, and slid next to Prudence. She was crying. I put an arm around her. I knew what she was feeling, worrying about her mother.

  “Everything will be fine,” I told her, not knowing if that was true.

  “Can I come?” Rebecca Lynn asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Miller said. “Be quick, now.”

  My sister crawled up and squeezed in between the two Miller boys.

  “What can I do?” Dad asked.

  Mr. Miller said, “Pray that Doctor Hensel makes it in time.”

  We left Dad behind. The Millers’ two-horse team huffed as they pulled us up the pecan-ridden drive, and the two cameramen who were left to walking panted almost as loudly as they hiked with their cameras behind us.

  Doctor Hensel arrived thirty minutes after us, and immediately handed out orders. I was in charge of fresh water, just like at our cabin, only at the Millers’ house, a water pump was stationed near the back door. Sweat poured down my neck as back and forth I went with the bucket, first with Carl on my heels, then Rusty. Soon, I was taking bloody rags and washing them out. I wasn’t sure where all the blood was coming from, but I couldn’t imagine what the sight of those rags was doing to Prudence. Rebecca Lynn was in charge of putting the younger brothers to bed. Prudence and Nanny were the only two allowed in the master bedroom. Even Mr. Miller didn’t go in. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t want to be with his wife. Why
was he just sitting there on the front porch smoking his stinky old cigar?

  But I never asked. I was sure it had something to do with the era. Women working; men waiting for the work to get done.

  If I’d been pregnant, I’d never have signed up for a reality show. But then, I thought, people do strange things when it comes to money. As I rushed in and out trough the kitchen door with the bucket, I wondered how many families in Sweet Sugar Gap were on the brink of losing their homes like us. Maybe Mr. Miller had lost his job, too, and that’s why his family was here. It was possible that the Miller family’s real life was harder than ours.

  By the time the grandfather clock chimed four times, my eyes barely stayed open. I sat on the bottom step with my head against a spindle, but each time I started to doze, Mrs. Miller would let out a scream that made my heart stop. I could hear Nanny and Prudence telling her again and again that everything would be fine.

  At four-thirty, Prudence came to the top of the steps. Her face was washed out and she had rings under her eyes. Her bonnet hung down around the back of her neck, her hair was flat with perspiration, and she was barefoot. “It’s a girl.”

  The announcement sent a jolt through my core and I sobbed from a mixture of relief and exhaustion. Mr. Miller rushed past us, skipping two steps at a time.

  “Come up and see,” Prudence said.

  Rebecca Lynn and I held hands as we made our way up the steps.

  We followed Prudence into a large shadowy bedroom filled with satiny peach textiles. Oil lamps were lit, and the curtains were drawn shut. Mrs. Miller, her face flushed, lay under a sheet in the four-poster bed, holding the baby wrapped tightly in swaddling against her chest. The newborn didn’t move as Mrs. Miller rocked it gently in her arms. It didn’t cry either, like some brand new babies.

  Nanny wiped Mrs. Miller’s brow and took the linen to a pot of water on a table.

  Prudence said, as she crawled under the covers next to her mother, “We’re calling her Camellia.”

  “That’s beautiful,” I said, barely hearing the name, trying to keep my eyes open as I stared down at the sleeping baby.