A Figure of Speech

by Norma Fox Mazer

  She found some bricks that had fallen from the crumbling chimney, brought them in, and stacked them against the cellar door. That glimpse of stairless darkness had frightened her. If Grandpa had taken that one step and fallen—she shuddered, then told herself not to think that way. It was dangerous on Pittmann Street, too.

  “We still don’t have water, Grandpa,” she said. She didn’t mind so much being dirty, and she didn’t want to upset him, but they’d need water to drink if they were going to stay on the farm.

  “There’s a well back of the house,” he said, leading the way out the back door onto a rotting porch, the very porch where his grandmother had once sat, picking lice out of her turkeys.

  All around the house, a jungle of weeds had grown up, burdock and dewberries, tall, scrawny and vigorous, taller than Jenny and nearly impenetrable. “We could use a machete here,” she said. “Ouch! They scratch.”

  “Scythe is what you mean,” Grandpa said. Together they kicked a narrow path through the weeds to the well.

  By the time they got there, they were both covered with clumps of stinging burrs that clung to their ankles and arms and tangled in Jenny’s long hair. The well, too, was overgrown, and Jenny tore away the weeds to get to the rotting wood cover. The well, flush with the ground, was stone-lined. A cool wave of air rose to fan her face and, looking down into the well, she saw her own wavering reflection and the sky behind her.

  Nearby, Grandpa found a metal pail half choked with dirt and lashed with a leather harness. He knocked out the dirt and then, groaning as he knelt, lowered the pail into the well. Jenny knelt on the ground next to him, watching as it tipped into the water. Hand over hand on the leather harness, Grandpa drew it up. “Heavy,” he grunted, setting the pail on the ground.

  Jenny plunged her hands into the clear, cold water and drank from her cupped palms. Grandpa drank for a long time from the lip of the pail, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck; then he swished water inside his mouth and spit it out. “This is the water God made,” he said. “Pure water, not filled with chemicals.”

  At noon they sat down to eat their lunch under an apple tree in the field next to the house. The tree was old and had thick knobby branches spread wide and low, heavy with apples. The ground, too, was covered with fruit, some of it bruised, some wormy, but most of it strong, fleshy fruit that Jenny bit into with pleasure. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree. Below, the valley was filled with a pure bright light, and the sun was warm on her legs.

  “In the spring,” Grandpa said, “I’ll make a garden. Not too big. Have to fence it against the rabbits and ’chucks. I’ll plant squash, carrots, cabbage, potatoes …” His hands worked as he spoke, laying out the neat rows, carefully setting in the seed, and pulling weeds. “Eh,” he said on a long sigh, “this is the place. The place for a man to come. It’s been waiting for me. It’s hurt and ruined, but it’s quiet and peaceful.” He nodded. “Things can be fixed and patched, and when I’m tired of working, I’ll come out here and rest and look off down there into the valley and think of things and remember things.”

  Jenny closed her eyes. With Grandpa’s spirits restored, she felt happy and contented. She didn’t feel like thinking too far ahead. She dozed off easily into a bright swarming dream of animals and running and great patches of sunlight.

  Later in the afternoon she found several sheets of corrugated tin that had blown off the barn roof. She dragged the straightest sheet back to the house to show Grandpa. “Useful,” he agreed. “We can cover a window with it.”

  Jenny rummaged in the barn on a splintery shelf and found a box of rusted nails, but no hammer. “Never mind,” Grandpa said, and he showed her how to use a potato-sized stone to bang the nails into the sheet of tin, which he held in place over the empty window of their room.

  Some time after, Jenny went to the outhouse, but walked out almost immediately. “Grandpa,” she called. The old man was picking jagged shards of glass off the ground and throwing them into an empty five-gallon oil can. “Grandpa, I have to go, but I don’t think I can use the outhouse.”

  He straightened up slowly, one hand to his chest. “Now, listen here, Jenny, this isn’t the city. No flush toilets. Now I’m sorry, but—”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I don’t mind using it, but I don’t think it’s any good anymore. I mean, there’s no hole under the seat, just dirt right up to the seat.”

  “Well, let’s go see,” he said.

  She was right. The outhouse, a tiny tarpapered shack leaning with the wind, had a rough wooden three-seater, but it was useless because earth had mounded up flush to the seats.

  “I don’t understand it,” Grandpa said.

  “It’s not—you know,” Jenny said, looking in. “It’s just dirt. We could shovel it out.”

  “A five-foot hole, that’s what’s needed for an outhouse.” Grandpa looked at his hands. “Five-foot hole-digging is young man’s work.”

  “I could,” Jenny said, “if I had a shovel. I’d do it.”

  Grandpa started back toward the house, then, remembering Jenny’s problem, he turned and said, “Go out there in the fields, Jenny, and make yourself a cat hole. Do your business, then cover it good.”

  Jenny pushed her way through the weeds into a field, looking around for a sheltered place. She chose a spot under a small twisted sumac, and with a stick dug a shallow hole for herself.

  A breeze fanned her hot face. Well, Jenny, she told herself, this is how the pioneers did it.

  The sun went down abruptly at the end of the day, and as it sank, cold and darkness descended. Grandpa built a fire in the stove with paper and twigs, and Jenny fed it bits and pieces of wood she’d picked up throughout the house. “Lucky the chimney wasn’t busted like everything else,” Grandpa said. He sat on the broken rocker, head back, eyes closed in weariness. “Ought to go look and see if that chimney is drawing okay.”

  “I will,” Jenny said, jumping up.

  Outside, she stood away from the house, neck craned, watching the smoke puffing up from the chimney. The fire gave a soft inner glow to the old house and night smoothed out the destruction it had suffered. The smoke, catching in the branches of the trees, drifted downward to the ground. There were dark clouds massed on the horizon. Jenny wondered if it would rain that night. Her family seemed very far away.

  Inside she pulled a wooden box in front of the stove and she and Grandpa shared apples from the apple tree and the rest of the cheese and crackers. A soaking weariness filled her. She had been moving since dawn, not eaten much, only cat-napped, and had worked hard all day. Her hands were swollen and scratched from the banging, digging, and dragging she’d been doing all day. She bent forward, her head on her knees. With the tin up over the windows and the fire glowing in the stove, the room was really cozy. Her eyes closed, opened, then closed again.

  “Jenny.” Grandpa’s hand was on her shoulder. “Bedtime.” They lay down on the bare bedsprings, covered with Grandpa’s coat and her jacket. Smoke puffed from the stove. “Need isinglass in that,” Grandpa said.

  There was an intense hush, and then a gradual upsurge of strange small noises, scamperings behind the walls, chittering and rustling sounds overhead. In another part of the house, a shutter banged, and trees creaked against the roof. The wind blew up higher, rattling the tin. A chill shook Jenny and she huddled closer to Grandpa, wishing she had a blanket, aware of the bare springs pressed into her sides. Nevertheless, she slept. Nothing could have kept her awake.

  Much later, she half sat up, feeling stiff and cold. Something had awakened her. There was a flickering light in the room, casting long strange shadows over the wall. Grandpa was standing by the bed. “Grandpa,” Jenny said. In the dim light of the dying fire she saw his face, sagging and bewildered. As if he had no idea where he was or why he was there.

  “Grandpa,” she said again. He didn’t answer. Something caught in her throat. “Grandpa—” She reached out, touched him, groped, found
his hand. “I’m here, Grandpa,” she said, “I’m here.”

  She didn’t know if it was that, or the touch of her hand, but he lay down next to her, sighing deeply. She put her arms around him, and that way they fell asleep again.

  Chapter 25

  Jenny woke with the dawn. The house was dark and still. Outside, filling the air, birds were calling. Far off, cows called impatiently. Grandpa was gone.

  Jenny pushed aside his coat and got out of bed. She looked around the room, seeing the dirt and ruin afresh in the clear morning light. “Grandpa,” she called, “Grandpa, where are you?”

  She ran to the door, suddenly afraid. The ground was wet and she saw his trail through the silvered grass. He was gathering wood, bending slowly to pick up the blowdown under the maples. A shiver shook her. “Grandpa, your coat,” she called. “You ought to have your coat. It’s chilly.” She brought the coat to him and kissed him good morning on his rough, unshaven cheek.

  She washed her hands and face in icy well water, then followed her path through the fields for her morning “business.” For breakfast they ate a plate of apples. The fruit was mealy, but sweet, and Jenny, famished, ate half a dozen. It was only when she was on her sixth apple that it occurred to her there might be worms in them. She turned the apple slowly. Nothing. Thank goodness! But just then in the apple Grandpa was eating, she saw a small green worm.

  “Grandpa! A worm. Stop eating. Wait—” she cried.

  He continued chewing. “Only meat, Jenny,” he said and calmly swallowed.

  “Oh, Grandpa!” She hugged him, laughing, and covered his bristly face with kisses.

  Their diet all day was apples and well water. Jenny’s stomach rumbled, and she decided that if she had to eat another apple she would scream. But she ate a dozen more apples and she didn’t scream. Anything was better than being hungry.

  In New Sayre they could buy food and other things they badly needed, but New Sayre was eight miles away and had telephones and buses. What if Grandpa insisted she get on one of those buses and go home?

  “Grandpa, if my parents agree to let me live with you, will you agree?” she said.

  He put down the wood he’d been stacking near the stove. “They won’t agree. Look around you, child. Do you think they’d let you live here?”

  “We won’t let them see it this way,” she said. “We’ll do things, we’ll make it look terrific. We’ll fix it up.” Closing her eyes, she imagined how the room would look when they were done.

  First of all, glass in the window, not that ugly rusted tin! Then a pretty flowered curtain hanging there to draw at night and two cots with blankets neatly folded at the foot. Shelves on the wall for pots and pans, dishes, and glasses. More shelves for cans of tuna fish, tomato soup, peas, and pineapple juice. And a row of silver canisters, each one filled to the brim with important food like raisins, flour, sugar, cocoa, tea, and oatmeal. They’d have a wooden table with two wooden chairs, and candles and kerosene lamps for light. Hooks on the wall for clothing, and a big enamel basin for washing.

  Later that day, while poking about in the barn, Grandpa found two old burlap feed bags printed with “White’s Feed & Grain Store” in a semicircle. He brought the bags to their room, saying they could use them as covers at night. Jenny shook one vigorously and dust flew. She sneezed and took the bag outside to shake and beat against the side of the house.

  “If we find some more,” Grandpa said, “we could stuff them with straw and use them for a mattress.”

  Jenny was off at once to the barn to search. Grandpa followed her, moving slowly. In the dimness of the barn, Jenny darted from one recess to another while Grandpa groped about under the old milk cans, bales of barbed wire, and tangles of leather harnesses. Eventually they found four more burlap sacks and set to work filling them. It was dusty, scratchy work, and Grandpa coughed continually.

  In their room Jenny laid the filled bags crosswise on the springs and then flopped down to try them out. “Ooof!” Straw pricked her. Dust tickled her nose. She sneezed. The bags didn’t quite reach the bottom of the bed, and her feet dragged down. But at least it wasn’t bare springs.

  In front of the fire that night, as they once again ate apples, Jenny made mental lists of some of the things they must have: blankets, cots, window glass, shovel, hammer, rake, scythe, lime for the outhouse pit that would have to be dug, soap, basins, towels, buckets …

  She yawned loudly again and again, her eyes gritty. She’d planned to go outside and look at the stars, but instead staggered to the bed and collapsed on the hay-filled burlap bags. “Ouch, they’re stiff,” she said, and that was the last thing she remembered until the morning.

  At noon the next day Grandpa lay down on the grass under the apple tree to rest. He had been moving more and more slowly, saying less and less. The sun was high and pale behind the clouds; the fields full of faded purple asters and limp goldenrod were motionless.

  Jenny went to the well for water, drawing the bucket up with both hands, the water sloshing over the side. A chill breeze sprang up, and she shivered, thinking of winter. Would they draw up water the same way?

  With both hands on the metal handle, she carried the bucket to their room and set it down. She looked around, dissatisfied. As hard as she’d worked, the room was still nothing. Drab and depressing. Poverty! Her parents would hate it. Her stomach rumbled and grumbled loudly. She was dirty. She was hungry. She sat down on the feed sack mattress, irritated and tearful. What were they going to do? They couldn’t live in this awful place! They’d never make it.

  She sat that way for a while, then jumped up. No wonder Grandpa wasn’t so sure of keeping her, if she was going to act like this! She grabbed the broom stub and began sweeping and singing loudly, “Kook-a-berra sat in the old gum tree-ee, merry merry king of the bushes, he-ee! Laugh, kook-a-berra, laugh, kook-a-berra, gay your life must BE!”

  The singing cheered her and she went to stand in the door and look out over the fields. There was a noonday hush in the world. Grandpa was still asleep under the apple tree. She stood there, listening to the buzz of insects, watching him. He was motionless—as still and silent as the fields. Grandpa? She formed the word silently, then ran toward him.

  In his sleep he chewed his lips. “Grandpa,” she said quietly, overcome with relief. His eyelids, thick and pale, fluttered, then opened. He looked at her blankly. “Do you want a drink of water?” she said. After a moment he nodded, and groaning, he got up from the ground.

  Later in the day, thick purple clouds brought a stiff, cold breeze blowing through the windowless house, rattling the tin and making the trees creak. Grandpa had sat inside most of the afternoon in front of the fire, coughing and saying little. His mouth worked silently as if he were framing thoughts.

  That night the room was cold and damp, and under the sacks and their coats Jenny huddled close to Grandpa. He coughed continually, and his breath, wheezing in and out of his chest, sounded thin and frail. He needs hot soup, Jenny thought sleepily. I’ll hitch into New Sayre tomorrow for sure, buy food, aspirin, cough medicine. Supermarket first. I’ll buy dried soups—easier to carry-sugar, cereal, some other stuff. Her eyelids dropped down like lead. She tried to keep planning, but everything became jumbled. She heard Grandpa coughing and coughing, and then she sank into sleep.

  The storm woke her. Lightning split the sky in long jagged streaks and thunder burst overhead, shaking the house. A war was going on in the sky! The trees hissed and bent in the wind. Water blew in around the sheet of tin covering the window and spattered them. Jenny pulled a sack over her head. Water began to leak from the ceiling. Her legs were getting wet. “Grandpa, you wet?” she said at last. “I’m getting soaked.”

  They got up and, in the dark, pushed the bed away from the window. Grandpa hacked and spit. Jenny felt as bedraggled and irritated as a wet cat. She fell onto the bed, pulled a sack over herself, shivered and shook, but fell asleep again almost at once. She never heard the storm end. When she woke the nex
t time, all was still and silent, except for the soft patter of rain dripping from the leaves of the trees. She had been dreaming that Grandpa kissed her and said, “It’s not useful, Jenny.” Or perhaps it was, “No use, Jenny.” Something of that sort.

  A long finger of icy moonlight shone around the window tin. Cold and sleepy, Jenny moved closer to Grandpa. His side of the bed was empty. “Where are you, Grandpa?” she said. Her breath puffed frostily into the air. It was cold, very cold, the coldest night yet. Shivering, she curled tighter under the feed sacks. “Grandpa?” Already she was heavy with sleep, her eyes closing. She thought that in a few moments she would wake again and make sure he had come back to bed.

  Chapter 26

  The chill morning air lay clammily in the room. The fire had gone out, and the floor near the window was wet. Grandpa wasn’t in bed. She pulled on her sneakers and jacket and, hugging her arms around herself, went to the door.

  There was a thin coating of frost on the ground. Every blade of grass was stiff with silver frost, and there was a deep hush over the land. “Grandpa, hello,” she called shivering. “Good morning, I’m up. Where are you?” Dancing on the cold ground, she looked around for him. The silence struck her as very strange, until she realized that the wind had died down completely. Nothing was stirring.

  She was hungry and started for the apple tree. Halfway there she saw Grandpa lying under the tree. Sleeping? She stopped, puzzled. On the cold wet ground? She ran the rest of the way, the stiff frozen grass swatting her ankles.

  Grandpa was lying on his side, one hand up to his face. His feet were bare, white and frail looking, with thick horny nails. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes closed. He looked as he had the noon he lay down to nap in the sun.