Hope in the Land

by Olivia Newport

  Next he needed a telephone. If he had to part with a coin to pay for the call, he would, but he hoped for the good graces of a small-town business. The newspaper office seemed like a good bet, and he pushed open the door. Behind a counter, wearing a heavy apron, a lone man was setting type.

  The man looked over his glasses at Henry. “Too late for this week’s edition. My columns are full.”

  “I’m just looking for a telephone,” Henry said. His next breath filled his nostrils with the dense smell of wet ink.

  “Local call?”

  Henry hesitated. “Philadelphia.”

  The newspaperman stared, considering. “You can’t pay for it.”

  “I have a job,” Henry said, closing his fingers around a nickel. “Government work.”

  “Just do your business and don’t worry about it.” The man turned away.

  Henry fished the number he needed out of his wallet and spoke to the operator. A moment later his supervisor came on the phone, and Henry began reciting the report he had been framing in his mind since yesterday. He debated mentioning his transportation dilemma as a reason he was not up and running sooner. At least he had four appointments lined up, including Gloria Grabill.

  “The data must be precise and collected in a consistent manner,” the supervisor said, “or we will not be able to compare it meaningfully against data from other areas.”

  “I understand.” Henry had taken a statistics course in college. He understood the process of gathering and analyzing data.

  “You know the deadlines, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope this will work out, Mr. Edison, but you should be mindful that thousands of out-of-work people would jump at the chance to fill your position.”

  Hiring Henry had been a last-minute decision. Henry had strong references, but he suspected no one had taken the time to check them. No sympathy would be spared on his explanation that his car wasn’t running.

  “I understand,” Henry said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  Minerva compared her dining room table to the photograph in the magazine. She didn’t have the crystal goblets, but her water glasses sparkled even when empty, and the assortment of garden flowers made a spectacular centerpiece. The table was as perfect as Minerva could hope for.

  Tucker Davis was a more than suitable young man for Rose, and his parents would be agreeable people to have as in-laws. Once this Depression business cleared up—as the president seemed to think it would—the Tucker family lumber business was sure to take off again, and Rose would be well set for a happy life, lacking for nothing.

  In the kitchen, Maude was sorting vegetables. Minerva had managed asparagus and artichoke hearts to complement the more ordinary carrots, onions, and potatoes tucked in alongside the top-quality beef roast she had splurged on at the butcher’s. Her rolls would be flawlessly risen and ready for the oven the moment the roast came out to stand.

  “Thank you, Maude,” Minerva said. “I’ll take over in here. Would you dust the front room before you go?”

  “I dusted when I got here.” Maude laid her knife down with more determination than the situation warranted in Minerva’s mind.

  “Please do it again,” Minerva said. If the girl gave her one more display of willfulness, Minerva would threaten to dock her pay. It would be just as well to have Maude out of the kitchen. Minerva was a fine cook when she put her mind to it. Tonight’s dinner would be perfect. On the kitchen table the triple-layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and a raspberry sauce awaited its dramatic entrance under glass on the kitchen table. No one made a cake as good as Minerva’s, not even Gloria Grabill.

  “I can do something.” Polly reached for the carving knife.

  Her mother interrupted the motion. “You are not going to handle a kitchen knife standing on crutches.”

  “I can sit at the table and do it,” Polly said. She had not proposed to cut vegetables with her feet. Nothing was wrong with her hands.

  “You’ll sit, all right,” her mother said, “and you’ll put that foot up.”

  Lillian looked up from the copy of the Budget she was reading for the fourth time. “Get the shoe off and put some ice on it.”

  “My foot feels fine.” Polly got along well enough as long as there was something to reach for to steady her one-legged balance. The crutches just got in the way of putting her hands to good use, and she propped them against a wall. “I’ll do something with these eggs.”

  “Leave the eggs be,” her mother said.

  “You need them whisked.” Polly picked up the bowl holding a dozen eggs and limped toward a chair. By the time she felt it sliding, it was too late. She winced as her weight involuntarily shifted to her injured foot and she lost her grip on her cargo. The glass bowl shattered, and egg yolks and whites slithered between the shards.

  “Don’t move,” Mamm said.

  “That’s one way to scramble eggs,” Lillian said.

  Polly didn’t meet her mother’s eyes. Lillian laughed and returned to her reading. Mamm placed a chair behind Polly’s knees and nudged her shoulders down.

  “I’m sorry,” Polly said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her mother threw a towel down on the mess. “I’ll get a broom. Sit and don’t move.”

  “Should have listened to your mother.” Lillian turned a page.

  “Cousin Lillian,” Mamm said. “Betsy is out in the poultry sheds. I’m sure she could use your help.”

  “Betsy knows her way around a chicken coop,” Lillian said.

  “Please go check on her.”

  Lillian must have heard the same immovability in Gloria’s voice that Polly heard, because she scooted her chair back and left the kitchen.

  “Mamm, I’m sorry,” Polly said. “Cousin Lillian is right. I should have listened.” She wasn’t six anymore. She was old enough to marry and run her own kitchen. Her stubborn streak got her in one mess after another. Now her mother was trying to corral slinking eggs and glass slivers in a household where the occupants rarely wore shoes.

  “It’s all right, Polly,” her mother said. “You don’t have to try so hard to prove whatever it is you’re trying to prove.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing!”

  “I remember a time when I was not much older than you.”

  Mamm picked the largest chunks of glass out of the mess and set them aside. Polly waited. Whenever her mother said, “I remember when….,” a story wrapped itself around a lesson Polly was meant to absorb.

  “It was the first Christmas after I married your daed,” Mamm said, reaching for a broom. “We were living with his parents and visiting around as newlyweds do, and even though we’d only been married a few weeks, I became convinced your daed thought he had made a mistake.”

  “Daed would never think that about you,” Polly said.

  “To make matters worse, Yost was already on the way.”

  “How would that make things worse?”

  “If he wasn’t ready for a wife—at least not me—how would he be ready for a child?”

  “Mamm, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “At the time I was thinking nonsense and convinced myself it was true.” Mamm scooped the gloppy mess into the trash can. “Don’t fall into the same trap.”

  Polly twisted her fingers in her lap.

  “It may be difficult to wait on the Lord, but it is worse to wish you had.” Mamm wiped her hands on her apron. “For everyone’s sake, I’d better give the floor a quick mop.”

  Dinner was a fiasco.

  Rose and Tucker, whom Minerva had seated beside one another, certain that they would fall into congenial conversation, spoke barely a word to each other. In fact, Rose had hardly spoken all evening except to provide polite responses to questions directed specifically to her.

  Minerva made one last attempt. “Rose, I wonder if the Davises have heard of that lovely picnic spot you told me about last week.”

  “Do tell us,” Mrs. Davis s
aid.

  “It was just a bit of land I discovered while out walking with my friend Sally,” Rose said. “Pleasant shade under the largest elm I’ve ever seen, and a small creek running through. I’m sure there are dozens like it though.”

  “It was a pity you didn’t have a blanket and a basket,” Minerva said.

  “Next time.” Rose scraped her untouched asparagus to one side of her plate.

  “What about you, Tucker?” Minerva said. “I know you’re occupied in the family business, but I hope you’ve had time to enjoy recreation as well.”

  “As I’m able,” Tucker said, “but I prefer a good book.”

  “One can always take a book on a picnic,” Minerva said.

  Tucker filled his fork with the last of the beef on his plate. He’d had three servings of everything. He liked to eat, and he liked to read. There must be more to a young man who would inherit a prosperous business. It was only a matter of drawing it out of him.

  Minerva glanced around the table. Everyone else was waiting for Tucker to finish eating.

  “How about cake and coffee?” Minerva said. “It’s your favorite, Rose. You and Tucker might like to take yours out to the front porch and enjoy the evening.”

  Rose stood up and tucked her chair under the table. “It’s been lovely having you here for dinner,” she said, “but I’m afraid my day has worn me out. If you all will excuse me, I believe I’ll have cake another time.”

  Minerva flashed her eyes at her daughter, but Rose had already turned to shake the hand of Tucker Davis, whose manners demanded that he stand when Rose stood.

  “Perhaps you’d all like to take your dessert outside,” Rose said. “Mother’s right. It’s a lovely evening. I’m sorry I’m too weary to enjoy it, but please don’t let that stop you.”

  Minerva steamed. If Rose had been a cranky eight-year-old, Minerva might have understood her desire to leave the table. But she wasn’t eight. She was nineteen and had been raised with better manners.

  Rose shook the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Davis and kissed her father’s cheek.

  Then she left the room. She knew Minerva had arranged this dinner party for her benefit and still she left.

  “The poor thing does look a little peaked,” Mrs. Davis said. “Has she always been a sickly child?”

  “Rose? Sickly?” Ernie laughed.

  “I’ll get the cake.” Minerva rose.

  The sooner the Davises finished dessert, the sooner Minerva could give Rose a piece of her mind.

  CHAPTER 12

  Minerva glared at Rose, daring her to comment on the overcooked eggs or the blackened toast.

  “You must be hungry,” Minerva said. “You hardly touched your dinner last night, and you turned down dessert altogether.”

  Rose nudged her breakfast plate away. “So you’re punishing me with a breakfast you wouldn’t put out for a stray dog?”

  “You were rude, Rosamund.” The still-hot skillet sizzled when it hit the water in the sink. “There is no other word for it. I will not stand for it.”

  “I tried to tell you I had no interest in Tucker Davis.” Rose picked up her cup of coffee and sipped slowly.

  “You have to think about your future, Rose.”

  “I think about my future all the time,” Rose said. “That’s why I can be certain that Tucker Davis is not in it.”

  “Have you taken up with a man behind my back?” Minerva spun to face the table. Perhaps Sally was not the only person Rose took long walks with. It had better not be Jonesy or Collins. If it was, both of the farmhands would find themselves out of work.

  “Mother.”

  “Rosamund.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you. But I also don’t want to give you or Tucker false encouragement.”

  Minerva swiped a dish towel across a counter. “But leaving the table before dessert? I raised you better than that.”

  “If I learned anything from you, Mother, it is how to have a mind of my own. You should give yourself some credit.”

  Minerva exhaled and hung the dish towel over the back of a chair. What was wrong with Rosamund having a mind of her own while also being married to a man who could provide for her comfortably?

  “When I meet someone I think I could care for,” Rose said, “I’ll invite him to supper. I’ll make sure he likes chocolate cake.”

  Minerva rolled her eyes.

  “I can’t fill you up with all the happiness you lost when the boys left.” Rose spoke softly, her gaze aimed at her coffee cup. “It’s not fair to expect that of me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.” Rose lifted her eyes.

  Minerva rotated, but Rose caught her elbow.

  “Does Pop know about the last letter?” Rose asked.

  Minerva freed herself from her daughter’s grasp and reached into a cupboard for another pan. “I’ll make you another egg. Two if you like.”

  “Mother, you can’t keep secrets.”

  “You’re nineteen. What do you know of what happens between a husband and a wife?” Minerva lit a burner on the stove.

  Rose slid out of her chair. “Nothing, I suppose. It just didn’t used to be this way.”

  “One egg or two?”

  “None. I need to iron my dress for church tomorrow.”

  Rose left the room. Minerva sank into a chair.

  Henry laid his papers in a neat row on the Grabill kitchen table, trying not to think of this as a practice interview. Certainly he would learn something from the process, but Mrs. Grabill must understand that this was an official interview session. At the other end of the table, Polly sat with her foot propped up and iced while her fingers occupied themselves with the mending basket in her lap. Between Henry and Polly, with her own hands tucked under her apron, Mrs. Grabill sat with chin up and shoulders back. She reminded Henry of the girls in his high school who wanted to look as if they knew the answers while hoping the teacher would call out someone else’s name. After being acquainted only four days, Henry already had a mental image of Gloria Grabill being in constant motion. Her somber presence at the table made him jittery, but her full attention was a gift Henry would not disrespect. This was his first documented interview. Every detail must be right.

  “The first step,” Henry said, “is to verify that we have accurately recorded basic information about your farm.” This was for Henry’s benefit. The files he inherited did not suggest the previous agent had been negligent. The Grabills would not have advanced to the next phase of research if their responses had contained irregularities. But the information was more likely to stick in Henry’s head if he heard it for himself.

  “Your farm is sixty-one acres,” Henry said, pen poised over form. “Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Henry made a light check mark in a box.

  “And you grow wheat, alfalfa, tomatoes, and potatoes.”

  “In the fields, yes. In the gardens we grow many other vegetables.”

  Another check mark. “No tobacco?”

  “My husband has always felt tobacco to be of doubtful value.”

  “Many of the Lancaster County farms use tobacco as a cash crop, don’t they?”

  “We don’t, Agent Edison. My husband wants our children to learn the lessons of eternity, and he does not find tobacco use wholesome.”

  “Of course. Then where does your cash come from, then?”

  “We find we have little need of cash,” Mrs. Grabill said, “but you’ve seen the fields. We grow what we need for our own family and animals. And if we have extra, we take it to market.”

  At the end of the table, Polly’s fingers drummed the wood. “Don’t underestimate the value of your poultry sheds, Mamm. Or the livestock you sell.”

  “What would you estimate the value of your poultry to be?” Henry asked.

  Mrs. Grabill shrugged. “I do not make a habit of calculating it. I just make sure we hatch more chickens than we eat.”

&n
bsp; “It would be simple enough to calculate,” Polly said. “We know how many chickens you have, how many eggs they produce on average, how many chickens and eggs we use in a typical week, and what the merchants in town give you in trade.”

  Henry took rapid notes. If other wives were as vague about their contributions as Gloria was, Polly’s litany of questions would be a useful tool.

  “I don’t think of it in that manner,” Mrs. Grabill said. “It is the way of our people to grow or raise as much of what we need as possible.”

  “Surely you need to make purchases from time to time,” Henry said. “Shoes? Clothing? Sugar?”

  “I get my sugar in trade for eggs,” Mrs. Grabill said. “Our shoemaker is happy to be paid in potatoes. I order cloth by the bolt and make our clothes. Of course, the older girls sew their own dresses now.”

  “Mamm,” Polly said, “Henry’s point is that all those things have monetary value, whether or not you use money to acquire them.”

  “Seems like a complicated way of looking at the simple task of taking care of my own family.”

  Simple was not a word Henry would use to describe Mrs. Grabill’s daily undertaking, at least not what he had seen of it up until now.

  “Would you happen to know the value of your land?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Grabill said. “I don’t. The land has been in my husband’s family for several generations, and we expect our sons and their sons will farm it for several more. Its financial worth doesn’t seem relevant.”

  “It could be,” Polly said, “if Daed or the boys ever needed to borrow against it.”

  Henry startled when Mrs. Grabill’s chair scraped back abruptly.

  Gloria stood up. She had hoped she would last longer than this, but she wasn’t going to be much good to Henry’s investigation of farm life.

  “Agent Edison,” she said, “are all of your questions similar to the ones you’ve already asked?”

  Henry glanced down at his forms. “Yes, I suppose that’s the case.”

  “Polly is the one you need to talk to.” Gloria reached for the pot on the back of the stove. She would need hot water for something eventually. This seemed like as good a time as any to call for one of the girls to take the pot out to the pump and fill it.