Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

by Leslie Tall Manning

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Our homestead was in ruins, and Rusty couldn’t wait to get the footage. Nearly twenty trees had toppled, some to the ground, some against a neighboring tree. None fell on our cabin, but half the shingles were gone, and our attic bedroom sat beneath slivers of blue sky. The storm had drenched our straw beds and now they smelled like the nests in the chicken coop. The chicken coop itself was on its side. Rebecca Lynn’s favorite hen, a red one with white spots, was missing. She was convinced it flew away. Later, I found the poor bird squashed underneath a large branch. I didn’t have the heart to tell my sister, so I played along with her chicken-flight theory. Gretchen the cow and Clyde the rooster were still MIA. Sully had burrowed inside a pile of hay in the barn. The poor pooch was shaking like crazy. The barn had managed to stay standing, and the roof was still in tact, but Willow had nearly kicked her way through one of the barn walls, and Dad had to patch it with wood scraps.

  We finally found Gretchen on the Millers’ driveway next to a downed tree, her udder swollen. She seemed disoriented, but by the time we had her milked and eating fresh grass again, she was back to her same old moo. Cuckoo Bird Clyde was never seen again, much to my sister’s dismay.

  “Maybe he joined up with a group of hottie flamingoes,” I told my sister, trying to cheer her up. But she didn’t laugh.

  I was way more worried about Wendell than some crazy bird, and begged Rusty to share whatever he knew, but he ignored me.

  “We need to go into town,” I told Dad. “To make sure everyone’s okay.”

  “There are more important matters here, Brooke.”

  Unfortunately, he was right.

  My sister and I followed him out to the field with a shovel, trying to salvage whatever we could. We unearthed a few carrots under a foot of mud, hardly enough to make a dent in our meals, but it was better than nothing. For four long days, we picked up branches and debris, keeping some as kindling, and dragging the rest to the trash pile to set it aflame.

  The springhouse door was blocked by two feet of wet earth, so for a time I had to climb over fallen trees and branches to make my way to the creek. Along the way, I spotted something shiny near a downed locust tree. Rusty’s camera watched me as I picked it up. It was an empty Miller Highlife can. I held it up to the camera.

  “Someone’s been dipping their hand in Modern Land,” I said, taking a whiff for old time’s sake. I tossed the can into the trash heap without showing it to Dad. He was already dealing with his destroyed crops and the gaping hole in our roof. I didn’t want to add to his worries. Though I did wonder who the beer drinker was—Prudence? Mr. Miller? Josiah?—and whether or not they’d be kicked out of Sweet Sugar Gap because of it.

  Five days after the storm, when our homestead was nearly back to normal, Dad suggested we check on the Millers.

  “And the Murphys,” I added, my stomach knotting at the thought of seeing Wendell.

  “The Millers first.”

  With Rusty behind us in his high-water boots, we trudged up the Millers’ driveway, climbing over large Magnolia branches and two pecan trees that had toppled, blocking our path. We straddled them and swung our legs over.

  On the porch, Nanny attacked the floor with a broom.

  “Morning, Nanny,” Dad said.

  “Mr. Decker.”

  “You all do okay?”

  “Does it look like I did okay?” Her Southern slave accent had been replaced by an angry city voice. “Does it look like anyone but me is cleaning this mess up? It’s been five days. You’d think those jackasses would send someone out to check on us.”

  I looked at Rusty, but his face showed no expression.

  Dad said, “Maybe the roads are blocked.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Is Mr. Miller home?”

  “He’s out back. Staring at that orchard while my husband and I do all the work. Mr. Miller hasn’t lifted one skinny finger, but he sure has a talent for staring.”

  She continued sweeping as the four of us made our way around the side of the house. In the back, at the edge of the orchard, Mr. Miller stood staring just as Nanny had described. Large limbs and shattered apples and other debris littered the property as far as the eye could see. The apple trees themselves seemed more like skeletons than trees. Rebecca Lynn picked up a squashed apple from the grass and examined it. Along the back of the house, a staircase led up to the second-floor hallway. Boards had peeled away from the top of the house leaving unpainted rectangular strips. The tin roof had curled along the top edge.

  “Orchard’s barely standing,” Mr. Miller told Dad. “Six sheep are unaccounted for.”

  “How’s your family?”

  “Shaken up, of course.” Mr. Miller called over to where I stood by the back staircase. “Brooke, could you go on up and talk to Prudence? I can’t reason with her. She’s about ready to throw in the hat.”

  “Don’t you mean bonnet?”

  “You don’t need to convince her to stay,” he said, ignoring my weak joke. “I just want to know she’s going to be alright.”

  With Rusty filming the orchard and Carl somewhere in the house, I made my way up the back staircase and down the dark hallway past the closed doors. The playroom door was open a crack. I peeked through the space. Prudence stood next to the tea table. Her back was to me, and she was barefoot. Her hair was frizzy, like mine when I had performed my Modern Land Underwear Dance. One of Prudence’s hands lay flat against her ear like she had an earache.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” she was saying.

  I glanced around the room to see who she was talking to, but her only audience was her collection of creepy dolls. She had lost it, I was sure. The hurricane had pushed her over the edge.

  “I know, right?” she said. “Well, I don’t care anymore.”

  I stepped across the threshold. “Prudence?”

  She whirled around, and her hand fell from her ear. As it dangled by her side, I heard a girl’s tinny voice coming from Prudence’s palm. Not from her palm, exactly, but what she held in her palm: “Are you there?” the voice called. “Hello? Hell-O!”

  Prudence pressed a button on the cell phone and tossed it onto one of the doll beds a few feet away. “Brooke! They didn’t tell me you were coming!”

  “What the hell is that?” I pointed to the cell phone lying on the doll blanket. After all this time, it seemed alien to me, like it had been dug up from the tar pits.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” Prudence said, running to the miniature bed and shoving the phone under a lacy pillow. “I will get so busted.” The phrase ‘so busted’ made Prudence sound like a Valley Girl, not a Southern Gal. “Please. If I get caught…let me give you something…” She made her way to the mantel. “One of my dolls.” Then she opened the wardrobe. “Or a ball gown.” She stood next to the doll bed again. “You want to borrow my cell phone?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t want anything from you. That’s not why I’m here. Your father asked me to come up and see how you are. But it looks like you’re doing just fine.”

  “I’m not doing fine. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Then go home. We could use the cash.”

  Carl came running through the doorway, his camera panning the room like there was a live dinosaur hiding among the toys.

  I ignored him.

  “Do you know why my family came up here today?” I asked Prudence. “To see how you all did during the storm. To help you clean up. Isn’t that neighborly of us?”

  “Yes…it is…”

  “Dang right, it is.” I turned to leave.

  “Wait!”

  “What?”

  She said nothing at first, only stood there looking confused. Then she lowered her voice, as if the camera wouldn’t hear her whisper. “Don’t you see? That storm was the final straw. Our orchard is gone. There’s no more mail. No more supplies. I’m so tired.” She fell onto the chair next to the tea table and placed her hands against her face.

&n
bsp; “Tired? You haven’t done anything. Oh my God, Prudence. I’ve had to do eight hours of chores a day. Collect chicken eggs. Milk a cow. Cook all the meals—”

  “I’ve worked hard, too, you just don’t know.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping my mother with the baby—”

  “Helping her do what? I’ve never even heard your sister cry.”

  “My mom keeps her in her room with the windows closed because of the pollen.”

  I pictured the children in the olden days who suffered from some disease or another, hidden in the attic so they wouldn’t get the other family members sick.

  “You and I have different ideas of what hard work means,” I told her. “You’ve been waited on hand and foot. You get all these things to play with. Me? I have a needle for mending things. And a bucket to churn. And a Dutch oven for the cakes I bake. Or baked, before I ran out of baking supplies. Those are my toys, Prudence.”

  But as I said the words, a feeling crept into me that I was betraying the Brooke who did these things. Sewing was totally fun, especially when I held the finished product in my hands. The cheese we made was better than any store-bought brand in Modern Land. And before we ran out of sugar and flour, I could bake breads and cakes in a Dutch oven with my eyes closed. Wendell had taught me songs on the guitar, and we sang together, took walks, swam in the pool, and kissed until I thought my heart would melt. Wendell liked this Brooke, and so did I. Even with the freckled face and uni-brow.

  “This place is hard no matter what you have,” Prudence said.

  “It’s harder for families whose crops were sabotaged.”

  “I didn’t hurt your crops, Brooke. I wouldn’t be caught dead in the middle of a field in the middle of the night. I promise you.”

  Outside, Dad called my name.

  “I gotta go,” I told her.

  “Please don’t say anything about…you know…” She nodded toward the pillow where her cell phone was hidden. Carl followed her glance then put the camera back on us.

  “That’s your deal, Prudence, not mine. I have way more important things to worry about than the snotty rich girl who doesn’t have a clue how lucky she is.”

  I left her at the tea table among her dolls and pretty things, and headed out to the orchard where, for the next few hours, my sister raked, Dad chopped wood, Josiah stacked it, and Nanny and I dragged large limbs into a pile. And all the while, the Miller family stayed in the pretty blue house while the rest of us brought their property back to life.

  Wendell Murphy didn’t wait for me to come see him. He rode up that evening, and we hugged and giggled until my sister said “yuck” for the tenth time and went inside. After eating a chicken-and-rice meal that his mom asked him to deliver, he and I played the usual game until Rusty headed up to the Millers’ house.

  We kissed for minutes at a time next to the wading pool. He always tasted sweet and minty, and he smelled like fresh lemons. I wondered if I tasted and smelled as wonderful to him.

  “I think what you did for the Millers was awesome,” he said as we sat on the bank holding hands. “Especially after finding her bonnet in your field.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Nanny likes to talk.”

  “I did find her bonnet. But honestly, I don’t think she’d have the guts to sneak out in the middle of the night, especially alone.”

  “Maybe her little brothers did it with her.”

  “Possibly. Still, she seems too prissy. Besides, what’s done is done. I meant to thank you, you know, for warning us about the storm. If you hadn’t, things could have been a lot worse.”

  Our owl friend hooted from a nearby tree.

  I moved my feet back and forth in the water, creating ripples. After a moment, I said, “We’re sort of enemies, aren’t we?”

  “Enemies?”

  “This is a reality show, in case you forgot.”

  “I don’t really think about that much.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Huh-uh. Do you?”

  “Sometimes…”

  “Well,” he said, pulling me to him and wrapping an arm around me, “if we pretend this isn’t a show, we’ll have way more fun. We may as well make the best of things since it’s almost over.”

  Almost over…

  The thought melted away as he kissed me. We made out until the long day got the better of me, and I nearly fell asleep in his arms. He walked me back to my cabin, where I kissed him goodnight, went inside, and fell into a deep and perfect sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A loud knock at the cabin door interrupted my dreams early the next morning. Neither Dad nor my sister budged, so I threw my dress over my slip and dragged my aching muscles down the ladder. Prudence stood on the front porch wearing a starched white apron covering a silky blue dress. A sleepy Carl with his camera on his shoulder stood behind her.

  “I thought milking a cow might be fun after all,” Prudence said.

  Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I want to pay you back for how much you helped us with the cleanup.”

  “That’s not really why you’re here, is it?”

  She gave Carl’s camera a sideways glance.

  “This is a bribe?” I asked. “No way, José.”

  “You’d get your chores done faster.”

  “You won’t be able to handle it.”

  In a singsong voice she said, “It would give you more time to spend with Wendell.”

  “You’ll have a heart attack. Or a stroke. Or you might break a nail.” I started to close the door.

  She stopped it with her hand. “Please, Brooke. Give me a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m lonely.”

  I laughed. “Not my problemo.”

  “You have Wendell. I…I don’t have anything.”

  She began to cry, right there on my porch, with the sun barely in the sky, and the camera zooming in on her wet cheeks.

  I shook my head. Was I actually feeling sorry for her? “If you do this, even if it is because you’re lonely, I’m not cutting you any slack. You understand? I don’t want any whining because you’re shoveling chicken poop instead of eating crumpets.”

  “No whining,” Prudence said, drying her eyes with her apron. “Cross my heart.”

  “Stop patting down your dress,” I told Princess Prudence for the millionth time. “It won’t keep it from getting dirty. Trust me.”

  We were cleaning up after breakfast, a simple meal of eggs and tiny bits of ham. We were nearly out of coffee and I didn’t want to take the chance of her wasting any, so I took care of that chore myself. After breakfast, when Dad went out to work on the roof and Rebecca Lynn went to collect whatever grapes she could find, Prudence and I headed out to milk Gretchen, who stood eating grass on the other side of the road. I carried the stool, and Prudence carried the bucket. Carl kept his camera on the two of us as I sat next to the cow. Prudence scrunched up her face when I showed her how I squirted the milk through the air and into my mouth.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “But hormone-free.”

  I pushed her down on the stool and showed her how to wrap her hands around the teats. As soon as Prudence’s fingers made contact, Gretchen mooed and stepped backward, knocking her off the stool.

  “Why did she do that? Mean old cow.” She stood up and for the millionth time brushed her hands against her dress.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot to tell you to warm up your hands first. She’s pretty sensitive to cold fingers.”

  I picked up the stool and pushed Prudence back onto it. She rubbed her hands together like I showed her, and then went to milk again. The milk squirted onto her apron. “Oh!”

  I redirected her hands so the milk landed in the bucket. Twenty minutes later, the bucket was half full.

  “I did it, I did it!” she cried, like she’d just won a spot on American Idol.


  “Now we have to carry it to the springhouse.”

  It had taken my dad and me nearly a week to get all the mud away from the springhouse door. Even so, my ugly shoes and her silky slippers were completely covered in muck by the time we got there.

  After pouring the cream into crocks, Prudence said, a tiny whine hiding beneath the words, “I need to use the outhouse.”

  “So? I’m not going to hold your hand while you do it.”

  Carl stayed with me as I rinsed out the bucket, and by the time I got back to the cabin, Prudence was rocking on the front porch, like a maiden waiting for someone to bring her a mint julep and a fan.

  I told her firmly, “No breaks till lunch time.”

  We headed to the barn. I gave her a brush and guided her hand across Willow’s back and mane.

  “She’s so pretty,” Prudence said. “But big.”

  When she explained she’d never ridden a horse before, I spent the next hour teaching her to ride Willow around the tiny corral. As she held the reins and moved like a goofball up and down in the saddle, she wore a funny grin on her face.

  For lunch Dad made beans cooked in bacon grease.

  “This is all you have for lunch?” she asked.

  “Welcome to my world.”

  After the dishes were cleaned, Rebecca Lynn, who wanted to be part of our training program, asked Prudence to follow her to the chicken coop. She put some feed in Prudence’s hand. Each time a chicken pecked at her slipper, she screamed like there were snakes in her hair. No way had she been in our field that fateful night.