The Root Cellar

by Janet Lunn

  He gave a startled whinny and looked around at her. She was sure he was laughing. She grabbed the reins more tightly, but before she could give him the shake she intended, the man came out of the house.

  Seeing her grim, red face and the horse craning his neck toward the flowers again, the man laughed heartily. He was a tall, thin man with a thin nondescript face, but when he laughed he whooped and bellowed and cackled with such pleasure that he became quite astonishing to watch, and Rose could not help laughing, too.

  “He’s got the soul of a goat, that Hermes,” he said, “the soul of a goat. You’re fortunate he didn’t eat your shirt—eat your shirt, upon my word, you’re fortunate. You’re a good lad.” He gave her ten cents and, with one quick leap, mounted his horse.

  “Thank you,” said Rose weakly. “Thank you very much.”

  The man looked down at her in surprise.

  “You don’t come from around here,” he said.

  “I come from Canada.”

  “You’re a long way from home, little Canuck, God bless.” And off he rode.

  Rose clutched the precious ten-cent piece in the hand that wasn’t blistered and raced down the road to find Susan.

  “What if I can’t find her?” she whispered as she ran. “What if she’s working in some house? What if she decided to go home?”

  “Rose.” Susan was sitting on a rail fence that edged a field beside the road.

  Rose stopped. She walked over and held out the ten cents. “I owe you ten more,” she said awkwardly.

  Susan didn’t take the money. “It ain’t so much the money, Rose. It’s just I didn’t know you was mean.”

  Rose flushed from her toes to her scalp. She didn’t say anything. A squirrel scampered up a nearby chestnut tree, chattering.

  “Come on,” said Susan shortly, climbing down from the fence. “We got to get us something to eat.”

  Rose shook her head. “It’s your money. I don’t want anything.”

  “Who’s going to carry you when you’re so hungry you faint?”

  “You can leave me.”

  “Rose, we got troubles enough without you should start feeling sorry for yourself. Now pick up and come on.”

  Feeling both hated and hateful, Rose followed Susan down the road. At the next farmhouse they came to, their ten cents bought them a lot more than ten cents had bought at the railroad station in Albany. They ate eggs and bread and butter and drank a glass of milk each. The woman watched them suspiciously while they ate and told them they could wash at her well for another ten cents.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” said Susan.

  Past farms and meadows, across streams, through three small villages they tramped and there was no work. They did not speak. Susan kept up a steady pace until Rose was so tired and footsore, so totally wretched, that she sat down at the side of the road and watched, without feeling, as a large green and black garter snake slithered away through the grass with a frog in its mouth. She put her head down on her knees and closed her eyes. After a time she felt Susan come and sit down beside her.

  “It’s an awful hot place t’sit.”

  “I don’t care.”

  They said nothing more for a few minutes. It was past noon. The sun blazed down on them through a gray haze. Few birds sang in the noon heat. Only the cicadas with their fretful buzzing brought any sign of life to the wilting landscape. Traffic on the road was desultory. Now and then a buggy rattled by or a farmer’s wagon. Sometimes a horseman clop-clopped along. In the distance the train whistle tooted.

  “We got to get going,” said Susan, rising to her feet. “The last milepost said we come sixteen mile from Albany, and if your calculation is right we got a long ways to go.”

  Rose pushed her hands through her dusty, dirty hair, which was by this time a dull brown color and sticking out all over her head. She looked sideways at Susan.

  “I’m sorry about the money,” she said.

  “I expect you are,” said Susan and that, Rose felt sure, was all the word she was going to get out of Susan on that subject.

  That afternoon they were lucky. They came to the village of Paiseley around five o’clock. It was a village very like the others they had passed through, with a cluster of houses and stores around a green on which stood the village well and a small bandstand. In addition, stretched out across the green, was a long table made up of several tables end to end, with places set for all the people in the village.

  A band was tuning up in the bandstand. The green was full of people—women setting the table with all kinds of pickles and relishes, platters of cold chicken and beef, salads, and fruits; small children running around, shouting, or being shouted orders by their mothers. “Here, you, Johnny, you take this paper and swat them flies!” “Alice, you run across t’Misses VanArpen ’n tell her we’re a mite short on butter!” And the men—young and old, soldiers in uniform—were gathered on the green in knots, talking and laughing. There was a great feeling of joy and excitement which did as much to pick up the girls’ tired spirits as did the sight of all the food.

  “Can we help?” Susan asked an old man, who was sitting at the edge of the village green and seemed to be organizing the celebrations, waving his stick and rattling off directions.

  “You passing through? Where’re you from? Where’re you headed, girl?”

  Susan told him about Will. The old man looked at them both intently. “Wait here,” he said and, standing up carefully, went into a nearby house. He came back with a square of blue and white checked cloth in his hand. He went along the full length of the table, putting meat and cheese and buns and cakes into the square of cloth. “The vegetables is kind of skinny on account of them locusts,” he said. Then he slowly and methodically tied the four corners of the cloth together and handed it to Rose.

  “Here, young feller, you carry this, and never let anyone say that James Campbell ain’t a thankful man nor that the village of Paiseley don’t know how to celebrate. We’re celebrating the return of our boys, and may the good Lord bring your soldier home safe as he brung mine.” He thrust the bundle of food into Rose’s hand and turned back to fussing over how the preparations were coming along.

  “Thanks, mister,” said Susan. “God bless you.”

  The little scene had gathered a small audience, which so embarrassed Rose that she forgot to say thank you.

  Once out of sight of the village, Rose was all for sitting down beside the road and eating the food right there, but Susan said, “No, this ain’t the place to stop.” Almost a mile and a half later they came to a little wood where they found a stream, and there Susan stopped. Gratefully they took off their shoes and stockings and sat with their feet in the stream while they ate their way through all but two pieces of cheese and two buns. “We got to save them for breakfast,” said Susan. Reluctantly Rose agreed and they settled into a silence which, although not as companionable as it might have been, was easier than anything they had achieved since morning.

  They traveled the road for over a week, managing ten or twelve miles a day. Though the fields were dry and chewed up and sad, the distant hills were green and blue and glinting in the sunlight. Sometimes they passed through woods and surprised deer or raccoons, squirrels and chipmunks. The birds sang noisily. They always made Rose think of Will. Now and then the road dipped down into a valley to pursue its path almost by the river’s edge, and then the steady lapping of the water as its tides rose and fell was a kind of song to march to. Rose felt secure by the river. She knew she couldn’t get lost. The river would take her to New York.

  It rained once or twice, but mostly they were dry, scorching days that burned their skin and blistered Rose’s feet. They slept in woods or fields, and washed in the river, in brooks and tiny streams. One night they sheltered from a thunderstorm in an old fishing shack by the river, huddled together against the bursts of white light that illuminated, then obscured, the black hills.

  Sometimes they were lucky and found work and ate we
ll. Other times they went to sleep hungry. They hoed gardens, washed windows, ran errands to earn twenty-five or fifty cents. Once they white-washed a hen house for a dollar. More than once they held horses for pennies. Sometimes they got rides with kind farmers, but the rides were slow. Once they rode in a buggy with a pair of traveling players.

  While their clothes grew thinner and dirtier and their shoes were dangerously worn, their bodies grew tough and sunburned. They learned to ask for work and to take abuse from strangers. Once Rose was chased by a gang of boys in a village who shouted and swore at her and threw ripe tomatoes. Once an old woman called them “thieving children” and threatened them with the county jail. Another time, passing through a town on a Saturday evening, Susan was bothered by a man who sidled up to her and offered to buy her a pretty dress if she would show him a good time. Rose was not taken unawares as she had been on the train in Albany. She came up behind him, poked her finger in his back, and threatened to shoot.

  “I’m just out of the army,” she growled, “the toughest drummer boy in the 81st regiment.”

  “Okay, son. Didn’t mean nothing by it.” The man slunk away.

  “What made you think to say that?” Susan was full of relief and admiration.

  “I remembered what Joe Haggerty said: ‘They’re all afraid of soldiers.’ And see, they are, even little ones.”

  For the first time since Susan had found out about Rose spending the money, they had a real laugh together. They had patched over the trouble between them by not mentioning it, but it had not gone away. It was like a bandaged sore. Rose was aware every day that Susan did not feel the same way about her as she had on that morning that seemed so long ago when they had set out from Hawthorn Bay. She was polite, kind, and thoughtful, because that was what Susan was, but the companionship they had felt was missing. It was almost as though they had a job to do together (although they never mentioned that either) and, when that job was done, they would say good-bye to each other like two strangers.

  One morning they washed in a small stream. Rose looked disgustedly at the remnants of her socks, two lengths of gray, tattered cloth. She stuffed them into the knot-hole of a tree.

  “Even the robins won’t want to make nests out of them,” said Susan. “They can have my bonnet. It’s got almost as many holes as a sieve.” She tied the misshapen black straw to a branch. She looked ruefully down at her dress, by now grimy and thin. “Ain’t nothing much to be done about that.”

  Rose’s jeans had holes in both knees and were crusty with dirt. She was so used to them she hardly noticed.

  “Come on,” she said. “We must keep going.”

  As the sun came up over the hills, they reached the edge of a small village whose signpost announced that it was called Dorland. Opposite was a little unpainted store in front of which stood a blacksmith shop. The shop was quiet and the smith was standing outside, his hands on his hips, looking very disgruntled.

  “You, boy,” he called, when he caught sight of them coming along the road, “you want a job?” He was a squat, swarthy man with hairy arms and straight black hair, and a beard that almost hid his small tight mouth.

  Rose crossed the road to stand beside him. “How much money?” she asked boldly.

  He looked her up and down. “You’re pretty small,” he said. “Give you twenty-five cents a day and room and board.”

  Rose went back to where Susan waited. “Twenty-five cents a day isn’t very much,” she whispered. “We’d only have a dollar and seventy-five cents at the end of a whole week. I’m not going to do it.” Susan nodded.

  “No, thank you,” she called. They started on their way.

  “Wait! Come here, boy. I can see you’re a bright little lad. Now if you was to work hard for me, I might see my way clear to give you a whole dollar.”

  Rose looked at Susan. Susan said in a low voice, “If I could find work in th’village and earn the same, at the end of the week we’d have fourteen dollars and we could get back on the train all the way to Washington. I think you might better tell the man yes.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Rose and, with those words, began the most miserable week she had ever spent in her life. While Susan went off up the road to look for work, Rose was led into the darkness of the blacksmith’s shop.

  Her chief job was to wield the bellows so that the fire in the forge would burn hot enough for the smith to soften his horseshoes, wagon wheels, and plough points over it. The forge looked to Rose like a big, brick barbeque without a grill on top and with a hole in the side, just under the fire box, for the bellows to blow air through. The bellows was like a huge fan made of accordion folds of leather, attached at one end to the floor, with a large handle at the other end which the bellows boy was to pump vigorously up and down to drive the air that kept the fire roaring.

  The shop was deep and close. Its only light came from the one door at the front and the red glowing fire. The two windows at either side were permanently shut and covered with black dust. It was only after her eyes had become used to the dark that Rose could see what else was there besides the forge, the bellows, and the anvil on which the smith pounded the white hot metal into shape—the ringing of metal on metal deafening to the ears and the flying sparks frightening to watch. There were kegs toward the back, full of horseshoes and nails and spare bits of farm machinery. There were rings along one side wall for horses to be tied to while they were being shod. There was a bucket full of cold water, which Rose was required to cart from the well that stood just off to the east of the shop. The water was for quenching the hot metal when the smith was finished shaping it, and its sizzle and steam made the whole shop seem to Rose like descriptions she had read in books of torture chambers and dungeons.

  Nor was the smith a friendly man. He said nothing all morning except to let loose a long stream of curses if something went wrong. He stopped once at midday and brought out a lunch of bread, lard, and cheese, of which he gave Rose a very small portion. He had a bottle of beer for himself. Rose had water from the well. The only thing he said to her as he was getting up from his lunch was “Too hot to work. Farmers be in all afternoon with their horses.” And they were, from early afternoon until the shadows grew long. They stood around outside and looked curiously at Rose but no one spoke to her, while Peter Maas (Rose learned that that was his name by listening to the men) poked the horseshoes into the glowing coals with his long tongs and she pumped furiously at the bellows, feeling sure, at first, that her arms would fall off, and then growing so numb she hardly cared.

  When evening came at last, Peter Maas put down his hammers and left the forge.

  “Stay by until the fire dies,” he growled and stumped off up the lane to his shack. Rose didn’t know what to do. She was very hungry and so tired she was almost falling over. She waited by the fire. Peter Maas did not come back. She heard voices from the village, but no one came near the blacksmith shop. There was no sign of Susan. The fire died down. She fell asleep, her back against the front of the shop.

  When she woke, the sun was coming up over the distant hills. She got up, drank at the well, and splashed water on her face. She stretched her tired legs and almost cried with the stiff pain in her arms. She was dizzy with hunger.

  “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she told herself grimly, and that refrain kept her going for the rest of the terrible week. Peter Maas came down from his house early that first morning.

  “Here, boy,” he said (he never asked her name nor told her his), and gave her another slice of the thick brown bread with lard on it. He started work at once and stopped only for his brief lunch. That night he told Rose, “There’s a bed in behind the shop” and left her another slice of bread and lard. She slept on a narrow iron cot and sometimes dreamed of Sam or Aunt Nan or Grandmother, too tired to care where she was. “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she would murmur and fall asleep. “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she would tell herself as she was getting up. “A dollar
a day will take us to New York,” she would chant to the rhythm of the bellows and the hammer on the anvil. The fourth evening Susan came. She was horrified to see Rose almost exhausted and covered with such black soot she looked as though she had been painted with stove black. She had had a chance to wash not only herself but her clothes and looked fresh and bright.

  “Oh, Rose!” Susan was aghast. “You oughtn’t to be doing this.”

  “A dollar a day will get us to New York,” said Rose tiredly. “How are you, Susan?”

  “I ain’t so bad. I got work helping out where a hired girl’s took sick. I get fifty cents a day plus room and board. Is he feeding you good?”

  Rose told Susan about the bread and lard. The next evening Susan came running up the road with a bundle under her arm. “I ain’t supposed to be out,” she whispered and ran off.

  The bundle had in it some cheese, a tomato, a bit of cold beef, and a small jar of milk. Rose stared at the feast in disbelief. Then she gobbled it all up, stuffing food into her mouth like a ravenous dog.

  Susan did not come again and Rose figured that she must have been in trouble for bringing the food. She ate bread and lard and the bit of noontime cheese, with the grateful memory of Susan’s meal, until the end of the week.

  At the end of the week, when it came evening, Rose put down the bellows. “I’ve been here a week, Mr. Maas,” she said, “and I’m going to leave now. You owe me seven dollars.”

  It took all the courage she had to stand up to that dour, bad-tempered man and ask for her money. The only reason she could do it was because the refrain “A dollar a day will take us to New York” had become so firmly lodged in her brain that it sang itself even while she was asking for her pay.

  “Seven dollars!” Peter Maas gave a short laugh that sounded more like a terrier’s bark than a man’s laugh. “Seven dollars! Boy, I pay twenty-five cents a day. That’s what I told you when you come.”