Little Blog on the Prairie

by Cathleen Davitt Bell

  “I’m sure you’ll be having stuff like that in no time,” she said, and I knew that what she really meant was that we probably wouldn’t have a meal like that until we got home and drove straight from the airport to a Boston Market.

  Grits, which we sat down to eat as soon as Nora was gone, taste exactly like what they are—cornmeal mixed with water. I don’t think they’re supposed to be crunchy, or have a smoky flavor, but these did.

  “Why did we come here again?” I said after taking my first bite.

  My mom said, “They’re better with butter.”

  My dad said, “And when they’re not burnt.”

  My mom pushed her dish away and stood up to pump water in a bowl to do the dishes, and my dad said, “You’re going to boil some for that washing, right? The only thing that would make it worse out here is if one of us got dysentery.”

  My mom said, “Don’t you have some work to do outside?” and Dad stood, took one more bite, then left the cabin. My mom turned to me. “Genevieve,” she said. “It will be your job to clear the table, scrape the food off the plates into a bowl for the animals, and clean the dishes after the meal. You can also make the beds, and I’ll expect you to set the table and sweep out the house after every meal. When you’re done you can help your dad in the fields.”

  I stood there and stared at her. There’s such a thing as realizing that you truly are in hell.

  8

  Week 1 – Monday

  11:16 am

  I am standing in the middle of a cornfield. I am holding a hoe. As my mom said when we were setting off to work in the field, we are farmers now.

  Week 1 – Monday

  11:17 am

  Here’s the thing: being a farmer is BORING. I am halfway down one row, there are ten rows to go, and it’s already taken TWO HOURS.

  I turned the phone off and slipped it into my pocket. I did this every time I sent a text, promising myself I wouldn’t get it out again until much later. I didn’t want to get caught. And I didn’t want to run down the battery. But then two seconds would pass and I’d find myself reaching for it again. I couldn’t help it. It was like the way Gavin sneaks his Halloween candy from the jar on top of the fridge where my mom makes him keep it.

  I had to have some weeding done when my dad got back, though, so I swore that this time I’d keep the phone in my pocket. My dad had gone to get us water, taking Gavin along with him.

  Before we’d headed out to the cornfield, my dad sat Gavin, my mom, and me down on the edge of the porch to tell us what we needed to know about bears.

  “I assume you’re not talking about the Chicago football team,” my mom had said.

  “They could be anywhere,” my dad replied.

  When Gavin said, “Seeing a bear would be so cool,” my dad hunched his shoulders up toward his ears, drew his bushy eyebrows together, and stood over him.

  “Bears are no joke,” he growled. “You have to be careful. Especially in the woods.”

  Gavin had been swinging his legs, but now he stopped.

  “You’re scaring him,” said my mom.

  “You kind of look like a bear right now,” Gavin said.

  “You should be scared,” Dad said to Gavin, but he backed away. “If you want to avoid a bear, the best thing to do is make sure they know where you are. Call out to them as you walk. Call out ‘Bear, bear.’ “

  “They speak English?” I asked.

  “Do you know what you do if you see a bear?” my dad asked.

  “Run?” I said.

  “Never run. I’m telling you…” He looked at each one of us hard. “If you see a bear, stay put. Wave your hands above your head. It will make the bear think you’re bigger than you are, that you’re not worth attacking.” He was demonstrating, but with the sun behind him, he looked like he was performing a rain dance. “And if they come for you anyway, what you do is you crouch down on the ground.” He showed us this too, his forehead in the dirt, his knees tucked under his chest, his arms covering the back of his head. His voice was muffled, but he still managed to shout out, “The idea here is that you’re using your body to protect your vital organs. Better to have the bear rip some meat off your back than to puncture your lungs or heart.”

  Now, all alone in the cornfield, I thought, “Ugh. Meat.”

  Week 1 – Monday

  11:41 am

  ARE there really bears out here? My dad said if you’re all by yourself you should sing to keep them away.

  Week 1 – Monday

  11:42 am

  But the way I sing, a bear might attack me just to make me stop.

  I heard something rustling behind me and I jumped. I stashed the phone thinking it must be my dad. But then when I called out “Dad?” and the sound of my voice died unanswered in the great openness of the field, with the mountains beyond, I started to get a little freaked out.

  “They told him don’t you ever come around here,” I started, my voice warbly and small. “Beat It” was the only song I knew all the words to because my sixth-grade gym teacher had made us learn a dance to it. I went on a little bit louder. I wanted to be sure a bear could hear.

  And by the time I got to “So beat it, just beat it,” I was singing in a regular voice.

  Holding the hoe in two hands, I brought the blade down on a clump of weeds growing up around a cornstalk. You have to hit them at the root and it’s not always easy to figure out where they are. This time I took down the corn plant as well. I’d been doing that a lot.

  The next time, I didn’t hit the corn. I started doing a little dance in time to the song, hacking away at the weeds. “So beat it,” I sang, whacking at a root. “Just beat it.” I was belting it out, but who cared? Except for the bears, I was completely alone.

  I was already on the third verse when I noticed Gavin and my dad ten feet away, listening. Gavin said, “Yeah, the ‘80s!” and I felt my face go hot. I went back to my weeding in silence.

  Week 1 – Monday

  1:24 pm

  You know what’s worse than being caught by your little brother singing “Beat It” at the top of your lungs while you do a little corn-weeding dance? Having him follow you down the row singing, “Showin’ how funky and strong is your fight. It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right,” doing a little dance of his own, and stopping only to say, “Come on, Gen, you know you’re feeling it.” All morning long.

  Week 1 – Monday

  1:29 pm

  My one consolation is that last night Gavin got a mosquito bite on his eyelid, and it’s swollen so bad he can’t open that eye. Actually, it kind of makes me feel bad for him.

  After lunch that day—grits again, because my mom hadn’t figured out how to cook anything else—we went back into the field. I was able to text again when it was my turn to fetch water, and that’s how it went over the next few days—heinous chores, stolen moments to text, lots of singing and calling out to bears who may or may not have been listening.

  Week 1 – Tuesday

  7:17 am

  Grits for breakfast.

  Week 1 – Tuesday

  12:06 pm

  Grits for lunch.

  Week 1 – Tuesday

  5:49 pm

  Grits for dinner.

  Kristin wrote that night to say she was using my texts to start a blog for the computer class her mom was making her take. Then she texted:

  I am sending you an imaginary box. Inside the box is bubble wrap. Inside the bubble wrap is a bag. Inside the bag are Cheetos. Mental Cheetos. Go ahead, take a bite. Good, no?

  Wednesday my mom figured out how to make beans and we ate them three meals in a row. At least it wasn’t grits.

  Kristin texted:

  Three times? LOL.

  I texted back:

  Week 1 – Thursday

  9:02 pm

  Listen to this: Mom said there’s a barrel of salted beef in the pantry but it could be rancid. We could get sick. We could even die. So all summer, for dinner, we can choose betwe
en beans, grits, and… death.

  Ashley texted a lot too, telling me about the guy she picked up while standing in line for a roller coaster. He was cuter than the new lifeguard at the pool, although the lifeguard was from Europe and had a foreign accent.

  Her questions to me were always basically the same:

  What’s up with cute Hat/Necklace Boy?

  The fact is I didn’t know. Not that I wasn’t curious. All during our first week, as I got used to the routine of working in the field, sweeping out the smelly cabin, washing the dishes after every meal, our only visitors were Ron—who seemed to come over exclusively for the purpose of pointing out the number of corn plants I was killing instead of weeds—and Betsy, who gave my mom a lot of pointers in the kitchen.

  I wondered if we’d see any kids before the next picnic on Sunday. Would Ka still be funny? Would Nora still be mad at me? Would I have the nerve to talk to Caleb the next time we met?

  Friday after lunch, Gavin and my dad were back out in the cornfield, my mom was in the garden, and I was cleaning up after lunch when I saw the red-haired boy from the yurt-loving family come out of the woods.

  “I’m Erik,” he said after he’d knocked on the cabin door. “Matt and Caleb are getting a game of kick the can together. You and your brother want to play?”

  “Sure,” I said. I used to play at camp.

  “We’re meeting at Ron and Betsy’s,” he said. “At eight or whenever it’s starting to get dark.” He turned and started to walk back away. Just before he was out of hearing range, he shouted, “Grown-ups aren’t allowed to play.”

  Week 1 – Friday

  2:27 pm

  There’s a game of “no grown-up” kick the can on for tonight. What kind of grown-up would want to play kick the can anyhow?

  Apparently, the kind of grown-up who wants to play kick the can is… all of them.

  Starting with my parents. As soon as they heard there was a gathering, they insisted on bolting down their dinner and coming along with us. Maybe they were starved for non-family human contact as much as we were.

  “You cannot play,” I said to them on the way over.

  “Of course not,” my mom demurred. But I could tell she expected me to change my mind.

  When we arrived in the clearing, Ka’s mom and stepdad were already there, looking trim and crisp. Even in their costumes, you could imagine coach whistles hanging from strings around their necks.

  Caleb’s mom was holding his little sister’s hand, and his dad—who had been chewing on straw before—was now swinging a big walking stick. The grown-ups immediately started chatting—my mother and Caleb’s mom, the red-haired family’s mom and Betsy, plus the red-haired dad and the blond gym teachers.

  It was funny to see them acting like old friends. Even the kids were doing it. The posse of nine-year-old doll fanatics were jumping up and down with excitement, telling stories.

  “I sewed a handkerchief!”

  “Our chicken bit me!”

  “My dad got lost in the woods!”

  I tried very hard not to look for Caleb, but, of course, I did. And then when I saw him, I had to groan. He was sitting with Nora, and for the first time, I was like, Are they a couple? He’d lost the hat permanently now, and the full force of his cuteness hit me. His crooked smile. The way he reached out a hand to confidently high-five Ka’s older brother, Matt—the jock he’d played catch with the week before.

  Nora laughed at something and leaned against Caleb’s arm. He leaned down to pick up a stick from the ground and I saw that his hair was streaked with blond from the sun. Also, he looked really tan. Or maybe that was dirt? After two days in the cornfield, Gavin and I had noticed that when we washed our hands we’d have dirt lines at our wrists that were like suntans, only in reverse. Gross on me, but on Caleb it didn’t matter. Dirt looked good on him.

  I spotted Ka’s goth black hair in the sea of happy gym-teacher blond that was her stepsisters and I crossed the lawn to her.

  “Oh, my God, I cannot believe I survived this last week,” she said when she saw me.

  “I’m sharing a bed with my little brother,” I said.

  “Matt gets his own bed because he’s fifteen,” she said. “I have to sleep with Katie.” She pointed to her wholesome-looking stepsister. “She’s already a cheerleader. In middle school! And she totally wants to play with the dolls. I’m like, ‘Go ahead, Katertot. I don’t care what you do.’ And then she cries to her dad that I think she’s dumb, and my mom yells at me, and I’m like”—she threw her arms up in the air—” ‘It wasn’t my idea to come here.’ “

  It was a good thing Ka couldn’t see how she looked in a mirror. Blond roots were starting to show in her hair. Her white makeup was completely gone and in its absence I could see that, like it or not, she had a spray of adorable freckles just like her mom’s across her nose. There wasn’t much goth going on anymore.

  I laughed. “My mom can’t cook out here,” I said. “All we’ve had are beans and grits.”

  “What’s your crop? We got millet. I don’t even know what that is.”

  “We have corn,” I said. “Do you have eggs yet?”

  “Yeah, but we only have three chickens, so it’s like everyone gets a half an egg at a time.”

  “We only have two. One’s a rooster, so he doesn’t lay eggs.” I didn’t tell her how, since it’s my brother’s job to feed them, the chickens followed him around the barn. Once when I was hiding out in the hayloft, I heard him talking baby talk to them.

  “My mom’s freaking about milk because we don’t have our cow yet. She’s really into strong bones. Betsy sent some milk over.”

  “She hasn’t sent us anything,” I said. “Did Nora come over?”

  “Totally harshed on us,” Ka said.

  “I know,” I agreed, and felt immediately better. It’s always nice to dislike someone together.

  When Matt called us over to start the game, the red-haired dad—Anders—ambled over to join us. In the course of a week, his pale skin had turned lobster red. A girl in my class got sunburned like that on our eighth-grade class trip to Washington DC, and a teacher had to take her to the hospital.

  “No grown-ups,” Erik said as soon as he saw him. “Go sit with Mom.” He looked over at his mother, who was sitting on the porch, knitting. Knitting? I noticed none of the other moms were talking to her.

  “But I love kick the can,” Anders argued.

  Erik rolled his eyes. “You cheat, Dad. And you play too rough for the other kids.”

  Anders didn’t look like he was going to back down, until my dad slapped him on the shoulder. Between his animal phobias and his coffee withdrawal, I’d forgotten there are things my dad is actually good at—making people feel comfortable while getting them to do what he wants them to do is one of them. “I guess this is the time when we dads would be kicking back with a couple of pipes now, wouldn’t it?” my dad said.

  Anders went with him, but he looked back over his shoulder at us as he walked to join the grown-ups. He reminded me of a little boy I used to babysit who would play this jumping game on his bed after lights-out. His mom said it was okay, but I don’t think she realized he would jump for, like, an hour before going to sleep. I think eventually they got him some meds.

  Anyway, to start the game, Matt made us all say our names. We were standing in a rough circle, with Caleb and Nora on one side of Matt along with Caleb’s sister, Stephanie, red-haired Erik, and his equally red-haired sisters, Anja and Bryn. Gavin and I stood on the other side of Matt with Ka and her stepsisters, Katie and Cara.

  “How old is everyone?” Matt asked and quickly took a count. “Okay,” he said. “You guys”—he pointed to Katie, Erik, and Ka, who were all twelve, and to me, Caleb, and Nora—”you guys have to pull off some jail breaks.” He looked at the younger kids—which consisted of Gavin and the Doll Club, who were all ten or younger. “We’re coming for you,” Matt said. “If you get captured, just hold tight. I’ll be It first. Th
is tree’s the base. Caleb, you want to kick?” Typical, I thought, to assume a boy could kick it the farthest.

  But then Caleb wound up and gave a huge kick to the can—a biscuit tin Betsy had donated that looked officially 1890. With a hollow clunk the can went careening through the air and Matt was after it, catching it on the fly and racing back to the tree. Meanwhile, everyone else had started to run.

  As I crashed through the brambles, breathing hard and looking for a hiding place that was safe but not too far from the can, I felt like I was in some kind of a horror movie, like there was a camera and a madman following me. I swung myself behind a bush just in time to hear Matt yell out, “Cara trying to crawl under the porch!” I heard a shriek and I peeked to see Cara streaking across the lawn. If you get spotted, you can avoid going to jail if you kick the can before It does, but Matt was guarding the can and she didn’t have a chance.

  Matt waited until Cara seemed to have a shot at making contact, then gave the can the slightest of taps to show that he didn’t even have to try.

  “Matt!” she whined, but he just pointed to the jail tree and she sulked over.

  “Stephanie,” Matt called to Caleb’s sister. “I just saw your skirt in that bush by the barn.” She giggled. “Last time I checked, bushes didn’t giggle.” And there was another mad dash, but she was laughing too hard to even run for real. Matt gave the can another obligatory kick.

  Pretty soon Gavin was in jail, followed by Bryn. Anja ran for the can when Matt had his back turned, but he sensed her and sprinted to beat her to it. Matt was good, I thought. I guess that’s what having a gym teacher for a dad will get you.

  As Anja was dragging her skinny self off to jail, I felt a body colliding with mine. It was Ka. “We need a plan,” she whispered, out of breath from running. She pressed herself up against the tree. “I’m going to sneak around. I’ll make a distraction and pull Matt away from the can.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And I’ll run in and kick.”

  “Don’t mess it up.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Just then Erik made a run for the can—Matt had headed off in the opposite direction. Ka put her hand on my arm and we both watched. It looked like Erik was going to make it.