by Karen Wolff
“Gram,” I said. “Could we ask Ty to come here to live? I’d really like to be with him. Maybe I could fix up the shed where he and I could sleep.”
She glared at me. “I’ve already had two of Calvin Spencer’s children dumped on me. I’m not taking another one.”
“It’s not really our fault, Gram. With Dad the way he is.”
“I know that, Harry, but Granddad and I are too old to be raising kids.”
I thought that was pretty selfish of her. We were just about grown and didn’t need much “raising” as far as I could see. But her word was law. I let her chew on it for a while, hoping she would change her mind.
We had just finished supper that night when there was a knock on the door, and there was Carol Ann still in her pretty pink dress.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Gram said. “Come on in.”
Granddad couldn’t have managed a wider grin if he had stuffed a whole corncob in his mouth. “Let’s give this pretty girl some of your strawberry shortcake, Bess.”
I pulled out a chair for her and Carol Ann said, “I brought your diploma, Harry. You left it in our car.”
“That’s right. I forgot all about it. Thank you.”
Gram set out a plate of shortcake heaped with strawberries from her garden and sweetened whipped cream.
“Oh my, Mrs. Didier, I don’t know if I can eat all that.”
“Sure you can,” said Granddad. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. I couldn’t either.
“Did you tell your grandparents about the high school, Harry?”
“No. Not really.”
She proceeded to tell them about every detail of everything we had seen—the little kitchens where girls learned to cook, the classrooms for every subject. I didn’t see how she could remember every last thing that way. I sure couldn’t.
“I’m so excited about going to school there,” she said. “I just hope Harry decides to go too.” She smiled at me.
“Only people I know who went to high school are bankers,” Granddad said. Granddad hated bankers ‘cause he had to borrow money from them once in a while. “You aren’t planning to be a banker, are you Harry?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said.
“I just don’t know how he’d get to school,” Gram said.
“Dad said that if he decides to go, he could count on us for a ride,” Carol Ann said. “You’ll do it, won’t you Harry?”
When she looked at me like that, all sweet and smiley, I was ready to do just about anything she wanted. But more school? I still wasn’t sure.
“I’ll think about it,” was all I would agree to.
She got up to leave and Granddad said, “Where’s your manners, boy? It’s dark out. You better walk this girl home.”
I wanted to do just that, but had been too shy to say so.
We ambled slowly down the road on this pleasant, warm night. The moon was out and it was easy to see our way. I put my arm around her waist. When we got to her house she grabbed my hand and said, “This was a special day, Harry. Would you like to kiss me?”
I reached over and gave her a little peck on the cheek. It was the first time I had kissed her, and that one little peck didn’t seem like enough. So I kissed her again, this time on the lips. She kissed back and it was pure bliss. Then I felt it again—that pressure rising down below. I stepped back before she noticed anything.
“Is that you, Carol Ann?” her dad called from the doorway.
“I’m coming,” she said and ran to the door. “Think about school, Harry.”
Oh boy. It was hard to leave after that. I could have stayed for hours. I finally turned around and headed home. The moon was still bright and I figured I knew what “moonstruck” meant.
At home Granddad grinned at me. “That’s a mighty pretty girl you’ve got, Harry. Did you get a kiss?” he cackled.
“Oh, Alfie. Leave him alone,” Gram said.
GRAM WASTED NO time putting me to work first thing after graduation. “The store needs to be cleaned top to bottom,” she announced at breakfast. “I’ve been waiting for school to be out so you could help.”
I wasn’t very excited about this, but it felt good to be doing something different, and I knew she was right. The store needed attention. I carried buckets, brooms, mops, rags, soap, and Clorox over there. She gave the orders, and I did the work. I brushed down the ceiling to get rid of cobwebs, dead bugs, and the like. I quit every time a customer came in so as not to advertise the dirt. Then she got me started on the windows.
I peeled off announcements and advertising signs faded from the sun, notices of auctions and sale items, some posters so old they advertised Liberty bonds even though the war was long over. I cleaned out the dust from the sills and scrubbed the woodwork till its clean ivory color was restored. Finally I washed the windows inside and out with vinegar and water.
I stood back to admire my work, but Gram took one look at the windows and said, “They’re still dirty, Harry. You’ll have to do them again.”
I groaned. This job was going to take all summer. Just as I was starting over on the inside, the door burst open and three of the Beaubien kids came in. Don, who was a year behind me in school, came over to me.
“Have you heard the news, Harry?”
“What news?”
He looked around and spoke in a hushed voice. “They say the KKK is coming. It could be any time now.”
“What do you mean? The Ku Klux Klan? Who told you?”
Rumors had been bubbling up the last couple of months. People had heard that the Klan was getting organized and was planning to make trouble for the Catholics and the “wets,” but we hadn’t taken it very seriously.
“Father Calhoun told us last Sunday,” Don said. “He said there might be trouble, that they might come after us.”
“What do they do?”
“They get dressed up in long white robes and pointed hats that cover their faces so you can’t see who they are. Then they come to your place and burn big crosses to scare you.”
Don’s news sent a shiver up my spine. Not much in our town scared me, but I had never dreamt of anything like this.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“The priest said we should pray for them, but my dad says we’ll just have to fight if they come to our place. He’s got a gun.”
My eyes widened at that thought. If the Klan came after Don’s family, they might come after us too. Would Granddad shoot them with his old shotgun?
That night I asked Granddad about what Don had told me, and he said, “Aw, I don’t think that talk is going to amount to anything. Don’t worry about it.”
I did worry though, as I washed down the walls. I wondered what my dad would think, the way he was so down on Catholics and the French since he got back from France. I hoped he wouldn’t hear the news. Then I thought, why should I care what he thinks? He doesn’t care about me.
I had to move on, so the next day I started on the produce bins. They were filled with onionskins, here and there a shriveled potato, dried juice from fruit that had been left too long, and some things I couldn’t identify. I washed them out and disinfected them and filled them with good, fresh fruit and vegetables.
One thing this kind of work did for me was to give me time to think about my future. As a little kid I planned great things to do when I got big, but it was just daydreaming, pretend stuff. For a while I wanted to drive a chicken truck like Pug McCormick. Then I decided it would be fun to work for the railroad, be a train engineer and go places.
That all seemed childish now, and I began to count up what my real options were. I could keep working at the store for the foreseeable future. Spend my life cleaning up Granddad’s messes and making no money. Or maybe I could find work on a farm. It didn’t appeal to me much, but that’s what most boys did at my age.
I wanted to make something of myself. I thought of men in our town whose lives I could study and emulate, and that’s where I ran into trou
ble. Dad sure wasn’t that person any more. Granddad was fun in his way, but I didn’t admire him much. I thought about every man I knew, and I just couldn’t find much to admire. No one I knew seemed to have much ambition or interest in bettering himself. They just went on, day after day, doing about the same thing as they had done the day before. Never planning ahead. Yet I knew there were people out there somewhere who had made big successes of themselves. How did they do it? That’s what I wanted to know. It sure wasn’t by washing down a country grocery store.
The most admirable person I could think of was Great-Aunt Lida. Now there was a woman who knew how to get ahead. She made cheese and sold it; she peddled her garden produce. Anyone who wanted to have a special dinner got one of Aunt Lida’s chickens. They were that good. She did all that and tithed religiously to the Methodist Church. I admired her gumption but couldn’t very well follow her pattern.
I talked to some of the men who delivered goods to us. Bud Johnson drove the beer truck. I asked him if he thought he had a good job.
“Are you kidding, Harry? The government revenuers are breathing down my neck, and I’ve got a knot in my stomach all the time watching out for them. Then I get out here in the country and find out two of the barrels are leaking, and I’ll have to make another trip. Or your granddad doesn’t need as much as I brought. I lose my day’s profit from stuff like that.”
I could see what he meant. His job wasn’t so great. That brought me right back to the idea of going to high school. I remembered all those typewriters I’d seen in the business classroom. People who learned to type must be able to find jobs somewhere. I remembered the time my dad told me I might work at the courthouse someday, and how I’d have to wear a suit and tie every day. Maybe that was for me. The problem was that I didn’t have a very clear idea what kind of work those men, who wore suits, did.
Still pondering, I removed the meat and cheese from the meat cooler. I washed out that case with Clorox water, let it dry and air out. Then I trimmed the dried up cheese and cold meat and rearranged all the food so it looked fresh and appetizing. I thought the worst of the cleaning was over, but, no. Gram wanted me to do the floor. It was filthy, but I didn’t know how bad it was until I started scrubbing. The floor was just raw boards. Granddad threw a little sawdust on it every day and swept it up now and again. When I got rid of the sawdust, I discovered the wood was black with mud, grease, dropped food, and who knows what. I scrubbed with Gram’s stiff brush over and over. The floor turned a nice yellow-white color, and folks really took notice when they came in.
“What have you done here, Alfie?” someone would say looking around in admiration.
“Got my grandson home from school. That’s what.”
I was pleased with my work, but I did wonder how long it would stay clean. If it were my store, I knew I would paint the floor so it could be cleaned easily. I went home every night tired and slept like the dead, but I still didn’t have any spending money. I set my long-term plans aside for the time being and decided to ask Gram how she would feel about paying me a small salary. Well, she didn’t feel too good about it.
“What are you talking about, Harry? You have a place to sleep and three meals a day. Did you ever figure out what that was worth? And all those years when you were too little to do much work.”
So that was it. I’d get my board and room, and I’d better be grateful for that. I would have to figure out something to do about this situation because I couldn’t go through life with no money. I couldn’t even go roller-skating with Carol Ann and the other kids unless I got some cash.
After the store was cleaned up, I told Gram that I’d like to find some farm work to make a little spending money. She didn’t object because she understood my problem—she just wasn’t about to give me a handout. That’s when she began to back down about Ty coming to live with us. I guess she figured that if I were going to work elsewhere or go to high school, she’d need him for the store.
I CONSIDERED THE farmers I knew and who might be willing to hire a greenhorn like me. Also, which one had enough money to afford help. I settled on Ole Tollefson. He was a bachelor who had inherited his parents’ farm. Ole was known for being stingy beyond belief, but he had quite a bit of money as a result.
I rode my bike out to his farm. It was so quiet I thought he must be in the fields, so I called his name several times. He finally poked his head out the door of the tool shed where he was working on something.
“Harry! What a surprise. I’m just sharpening my axe so I can cut down some brushy trees. What on earth brings you out here?”
“Hello, Ole.” Talking to Ole was always hard for me ‘cause I didn’t know where to look. He’d had an accident years ago when he rode a load of hay under a bridge with a low iron superstructure. Before he knew it, one of the girders had sliced off the end of his nose. Of course it had long since healed, but folks said you could pretty near see Ole’s brains when you looked at him because he was all nostril. I didn’t want to stare, but I wanted to look him in the eye to make my pitch. I did my best to focus somewhere on his forehead.
“You probably don’t know it, Ole, but I just graduated from the eighth grade, and it’s time I found some work to do. I hoped you might have something for me here on the farm.”
“Shucks, Harry. I’d think you’d be working at the store.”
“I do work at the store, but that’s for my board and room. I need to make some cash money.”
He eyed me up and down. I wasn’t a particularly big fellow, but I thought my average size would be all right.
“You don’t look like a farmer, Harry, but looks ain’t everything. Can you drive a team of horses?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen lots of others do it. It doesn’t look too hard.”
He laughed. “It’s not if you know what you’re doing. It’s real hard if you don’t.”
“I wish you’d give me a try, Ole. I’ll do my best.”
Ole decided to try me out cultivating a cornfield with a team of horses. He helped me hitch up the cultivator and the team, told me where to go.
I got on the seat and took the reins, then had a thought.
“You didn’t tell me what you’d pay me, Ole. Would three dollars a day be all right?”
“That’s highway robbery, Harry. You go cultivate a field, and, if you do it right, there’ll be money for you.”
So I slapped the reins against the horses the way I’d seen others do, and we started down the road, the curved blades of the machine turning, ready to till the soil between rows of corn. It was a beautiful sunny day, the air was clean and fresh, and I was going to make some easy money.
I turned the horses onto the field road and stopped when we got to the gate. It was made of three strands of barbed wire wound around an old wooden post and held tight to the fence post with a twist of heavy wire. I got down from the cultivator, opened the gate, and drove he horses through. I jumped down to close it, feeling confident about this job and happy.
As I dragged the gate across the opening, the rotting gatepost suddenly snapped in two and all hell broke loose. The barbed wire came off the post and flew up in the air like an angry snake, and then came bouncing down on the cultivator with a metallic racket that broke the peaceful quiet of the day. I jumped back, startled by the noise. It spooked the horses, and they took off running with the cultivator dragging behind, flipping this way and that. Stunned, I watched as they went all the way to the far end of the field not stopping until they reached the fence, the cultivator twisted behind them and nearly upside down. A wide swath of young corn plants was torn up and mangled in their wake.
I was sick. I went down the field to the horses who were now calmly munching grass at the side of the field. If I could right the cultivator, I could turn the horses around and still do the work. I tried every which way, but couldn’t manage the cultivator by myself. I knew the horses should be unhitched from the machine, but if I did that, there was no telling where they would go while
I went to get help. I finally decided to leave them where they were.
I walked that long, hot mile back to Ole’s place practicing what I would say to him, ashamed of my failure. I knew one thing. There wasn’t going to be any easy money. Not today.
Ole walked back to the field with me. I think he realized the accident wasn’t entirely my fault, but when he saw the damage to the field he said, “I don’t believe you’re cut out for farming, Harry.”
So there it was. I was hired and fired all in one day. It galled me, but I didn’t want to be a farmer anyway.
Gram noticed how I was moping around that afternoon and asked if Ole had hired me. I figured I’d better tell her what happened before Ole told it all over town.
“It wasn’t really my fault, Gram. The post was so rotten it barely held the gate shut.”
“That may be true,” she said, “but the accident happened while you were using it just the same. Maybe you ought to get ahead of the game and go out there and put in a new post for Ole.”
“What? Fix the thing after he fired me?”
“If you fix it, he’ll be so amazed that he’ll tell people about that, instead of how you broke his gate.”
Well, that sure put a new slant on things. Ole was a big talker and I didn’t look forward to the ribbing I’d get about ruining his corn crop. Gram was pretty smart.
I went out to the storage shed and found some posts left over from fencing the garden. I got the wire cutters and managed to balance a post across the handlebars of my bike and rode all the way out to Ole’s cornfield again. I forgot to take gloves with me, so I took off my shirt to protect my hands from the barbed wire. It was a hot, nasty job, but maybe it would save my good name. I stood back when I finished, and was proud of my work. I hoped Ole would appreciate it.
THAT EVENING I went over to Carol Ann’s. We sat on the front steps of her house, and I told her about everything I’d been doing, including my failure on the farm.
