Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  Too much about me. This is not my biography. I would try to be a skilful analyst of the interior of me if I were writing my autobiography. A man’s inner life is his biography, all the outer life being but accidental circumstance. Of course, one must tell both, but the details of the outer life only to show what the inner has done with it.

  I studied as I had never studied before. I did not want to fail those children in any way. I would be the best teacher that a person such as I could be. I stung the board of trustees for a few supplies so that the children could do some work with their hands. The trustees were pretty sour about my high-handedness in doing this, but I did not care. I knew if I asked them, they would say no. What I did say was that I would like to get a few supplies, and their permission probably meant a dozen pencils for ten cents and some chalk for the ragged blackboard. I stung them for three dollars’ worth of colored paper, raffia, paints, and what-not—educational such like. Every child should be taught to do as many things as possible with his hands. It was a woman who wrote these wise words: “By training the hand to trace out Nature’s action, we train the unconscious mind to act spontaneously in accordance with Natural Law; and the unconscious mind, so trained, is the best teacher of the conscious mind.”

  At the time I had not read this that Mary Everest Boole wrote. I knew it only with my feelings. Besides, how was I to teach eight grades, with fifteen-minute recitations, and keep those children busy without busying their hands? There was not enough for their heads to do. I could not give them enough, and give it right, to occupy their time. I would not leave them to suffer unoccupied. All there is to serene happiness is to be absorbingly occupied.

  These farm children had never made anything in their lives wherein beauty was considered a necessary part of use. This is a lesson which cannot be taught farm children in words. They are not word-minded. They are inarticulate. But I could teach them through their hands. They could feel beauty. And man is mostly feeling. Says Walt Whitman, “What is humanity in its faith, love, heroism, or even morals, but emotion?”

  How could I study as I should, and plan basket-making and colored paper-weaving and such like, with things not going on right at home? We had hired a girl named Blanche to take my place in doing the household tasks. She was far from fair, as her name implies, being burnt brick-red. Her grin was wide, and it showed a mouthful of dirty, perfect teeth. Great shoulders and breasts and hips added to the lust of eyes which sought every worthwhile man, as her hands reached out for him. Her first challenge to every possible man was, “I’ll wrastle yuh, ‘n’ I kin lick yuh,” accompanied by a hearty laugh and a display of dirty, perfect teeth. To get her hands on a man...to get a man’s hands on her...she knew men.

  The only cooking she seemed able to do was frying eggs. She was not conscientious about giving an hour of her precious life to the cause of removing flies, as I was all the years I was on the farm. The flies lived on amiable terms with Blanche, and the Baron began to starve to death, for she served as many flies as foods, and while they probably have their protein, or caloric, or such like value, most of us are not yet accustomed to eating them and are foolishly concerned when we chance to do so. Charley’s stomach was as delicate as his ears were sensitive. Not that the flies affected his hearing, but this comparison is the strongest I can make.

  I did not learn the worst of this until the day when Charley decided he could stand Blanche no longer. Day after day Blanche served what appeared to be the same platter of fried eggs. Of course, Charley and Jeff and Tony ate nearly all the eggs on the platter each day, but there was something strikingly the same about that platter, a slovenly sameness. Charley came to the conclusion that the platter was never washed, that each day Blanche simply added some more eggs, placing them on the greasy plate along with any cold eggs that might have been left from the day before.

  One day a fly got tangled up in the river of grease that flowed around the islands of eggs. Unable to ford the stream, the poor creature died. Charley beheld the sad demise, but with cold, unpitying heart. Then his nefarious plot against the beauteous Blanche was hatched. He would find out whether that platter was ever washed. I can imagine how criminal he looked as he perpetrated the dastardly deed. No one saw him lift an egg and gently bury the poor fly under that ovum mausoleum. No, he did not lay a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Fly. Shocked? Look a little closer. Do you think that wreath means anything to a single unknown soldier? Do you think that is the right kind of gratitude, to keep up this pretense of the glory of war? Let’s take the cost of all that ceremony for the slaughtered anonymous and do something loving with it that will start preventing War. Let’s deflate this buncombe with which we show off before each other.

  So there was the dead, we might say the martyred, fly, buried under the monument of an egg; and there was the gentle Blanche, entirely unsuspicious because occupied in the art of attempting to manhandle Jeff and Tony at the same time...or should I say womanhandle, which is more deadly to the male...and Kipling did not say that.

  The next day, on came the platter of eggs, swimming in grease, accompanied by the great-bosomed, great-hipped Blanche, who could shift the plate about with one hand and with the other run her fingers through Tony’s hair, immediately afterward running her fingers—the same fingers—down Jeff’s neck, which is supposed to give a delightful thrill, and maybe it does. The Baron sits up with every fastidious nerve quivering toward those eggs. Yes, that must be the very egg! Its countenance is recognizable. Surreptitiously he lifts the egg, and damnable evidence! there is the very fly. Or, if not the very fly, damnable evidence just the same.

  A very silent Baron sat and pretended to eat. At the end of the meal he made out a check for Blanche—we had begun banking the school money and paying on our grocery-bill at the same time. Blanche was mad. Blanche was very mad. She gathered up her belongings, and out of the house she bounced. Charley washed the dinner dishes, not forgetting the platter, Tag gratefully receiving the mausoleum of the Unknown Fly.

  Charley had to go on with the farm work, so I tried doing as much as possible of the housework, along with the school work. Saturday meant cleaning the house thoroughly, baking bread, and doing innumerable household tasks. On Sunday Charley helped me with the washing, heating the water out-of-doors in a galvanized tub over a fire of sagebrush, built in a little rock enclosure on which the tub was set.

  On that first Saturday after Blanche left, I cleaned the downstairs rooms, which were the kitchen, the dining-room, and my bedroom—mine and the Baron’s and the two babies’. I heaved a sigh of relief as I fished my lovely white comb from among the embroidery I had been doing. Little Charles had originally hidden it there, in the basket among my fancywork, but with no intention of deceiving any one. The first I knew of it was when I was eating breakfast, and Blanche came flying into the room with streaming, disheveled hair. She never combed her hair until after breakfast.

  “Mrs. Greenwood,” she said, emphatically, “I can’t find that there white comb of yourn nowheres. I put it right back on the dresser when I used it, and it’s gone.”

  Like an idiot, I murmured, “You wanted...to comb...your hair...”

  “I always put it right back there when I git through with it.”

  I volunteered no solution, though I might have offered a clue, remembering, as I did, that little Charles had picked up my comb after I had used it, standing on tiptoe to drag it down. I had meant to take it from him. Now I was glad. I knew he would tell me where he had put it.

  I shall never be a good Christian because I cannot stand anyone using my toilet articles other than me, myself. There are none I love enough to have them comb their hair with my comb. I realize just as much as you do how very selfish this is. I am willing to buy another comb for any one, but the test of my friendship would be that. Don’t ask to borrow my comb unless it is the last remedy that will save your life. And then I will throw in my toothbrush, too.

  Blanche went off grumbling to herself that now she woul
d have to use the men’s comb, for, of course, every farm-house has a men’s comb, near to the wash-stand. This custom filled me with about as much horror as must have flooded the mind of the inquisitive lady who saw all her husband’s other wives with their heads cut off—or were they hanging? Mrs. Bluebeard had nothing on me when it came to having the blood freeze in her veins. That happened to me as I saw man after man run the same comb through his hair. It was not just because I was the antiputrefactive woman that I felt so outraged at the sight. Some instinct in me was violated. Probably a snooty one, bred in me by generation after generation of parasitic ancestors. I can reason this out, but please don’t ask to borrow my comb, just the same.

  My idea was that if I took the comb away from the home-cobbled wash-stand, every farmer would appear on the scene with his own individual pocket-comb. I recognized that he must comb his hair, for the farmer is a whale of a fellow, in the sense that his manner of washing his face is to throw water almost over his back. And then, there was usually dust, and perhaps dried alfalfa-leaves, in his hair.

  Of course, I did not effect a reform in this matter, as I did not effect the dozens of other reforms I tried to nuisance onto the sagebrush farmers. These reform-leaders give me a pain in the neck—and I was the painingest ever. But I had a heart. Even if Charley had not, of himself, hunted up the men’s comb, I would have restored it after watching a patient farmer trying to slick down his wet hair with the back of his hand. It was the first time I ever noticed the Mormon, Eb Hall, who afterward became my good friend. The test of the strength of your friendship is how much injury you are willing to forgive. Years and years after I saw him patiently trying to slick down his hair with the back of his hand, Eb rocked so hard in my beloved little chair in which I nursed all my babies, (I being the kind of woman who would fight like a tiger rather than allow any bottle to take my place—to miss seeing those trusting eyes looking up at you while your babe drinks his life from your breast...how could any real woman miss that experience without the deepest regret?) that he broke off both rockers, as you shall hear in its proper place, yet still remained my friend.

  If I had been shocked by Blanche’s use of my comb, I had a greater shock in store for me concerning that fair maiden—one of the greatest of my life. Everything clean below and bread baking in the oven, I went upstairs. Charley had installed a trap-door to keep the flies from coming downstairs, and the heat of summer and the cold of winter from doing the same. I pushed this up and stepped over beside the bed in which Blanche had slept.

  Even before I reached it, I had caught the frightful odor which pervaded everything. It so nauseated me that I nearly fainted. “Something has died up here,” I thought; “a cat, or something maybe a skunk...”And then I found them.

  I did not find a lot of dead cats and skunks, though I should much have preferred finding a nice, orderly stack of decaying animals of those species rather than what I did find. I had sedulously saved every coffee can we had emptied that summer, and there were many, for while I cannot drink anything but water or milk, on account of being easily intoxicated by coffee, Jeff and Tony and Charley were great coffee-drinkers. The Baron, being more or less German, had been reared on it, and his mother had been nipped in the bud by me when I saw her feeding my delighted infant, Walter, buttered toast soaked in strong coffee. She was a wonderful woman just the same. Different nationalities have different customs.

  But now for Blanche. I hesitate to tell you because I fear that, even at this late date, some of that ghastly asphyxiation may pour out from the pages I am writing, so vividly do I recall that disgusting experience. Coffee cans were ranged beside Blanche’s bed, and hidden behind other coffee cans, and in corners, and tucked about among the unfinished ledges made by beams. These cans were filled with what I shall refer to politely as ordure, though there is no politeness of any kind told in any etiquette book that has anything to do with that gross situation.

  We had one of those hideous, necessary little houses which spot the back yards of rural communities, village or farm, and which we idealists try to ignore in our phantasmal dreams of what life ought to be instead of what life is. These little houses always stick up like the proverbial sore thumb, and it is a tribute to the delicacy of the human heart that during their greatest reign, when there was one in the back yard of even the most pretentious mansion, dainty ladies still died of love for faithless swains. What has one of those little houses to do with love? This: it is a great balancer when we are likely to die of biological tortures to remember that we are but animals, like all the rest of the pathetic creation. Let us crack no foul jokes about this, but let us remain sane.

  Well, there was a job for God’s little pet lamb! To my credit let it be said I never once considered shifting that unpleasant task onto any one else. Fairly trembling in every Divine-Right-of-Kings limb, I brought upstairs a slop-pail. In this I carefully deposited those filthy cans, as many as the pail would hold, making trip after trip out to the little necessary house which Blanche had been too lazy to use. We had intended those cans to hold the lard from the two hogs we were fattening.

  When the job was done, I stood for a moment in the far back yard, contemplating the dark-green house with the toothpick-pillared porch. It ought to be burned to the ground to purify it after what had occurred there. I knew that I should never be rid of the horror of that upstairs in any other way. I never was rid of it, but I did not burn down the house, because as yet it did not belong to Charley and me, although we were still perfectly certain that some day it would.

  I was sure a dreadful fate must befall so offensive a creature as Blanche. I considered none of her virtues, though now, even in the face of a crime so nasty, I think there should be an attorney for the other side. Blanche was a far superior farm woman for out-of-door work than I could ever be. She had already plowed, sowed, cultivated, irrigated, and helped harvest crops. And I can imagine how she enjoyed working with the men. Well, maybe the rest of us women would enjoy working with some men. She had undoubtedly ridden the spring-tooth harrow, a machine for which I had a good deal of respect, since it seemed to get the best of every man who rode it. The disk, too, she must have ridden. And pitching hay was old stuff for Blanche.

  Now let us consider the plaintiff. One incident will be enough to throw the case out of court if we try it on grounds of farm efficiency and not of decency. We cannot condemn all people and all things for lacking decency, or half the people and half the functions of the world would be abolished. Personally, I think this should be done. But we cannot accept the opinion of one impractical woman against half the world.

  When I drove Old Buttons back from Charley Willey’s house by the spillway, I had not wanted to cause the men any extra trouble on my account, so I attempted to unharness the horse myself, a thing I had never before done in all my life. What I did was to unfasten every strap of that harness, literally taking the whole thing apart, turning it into a heap of short and long straps, so that before it could be used again, some expert had to match the straps, put them together where they belonged, and make the harness all over. Blanche would never have been guilty of such an act—causing the men to damn their souls with swear-words, and all that. So now, I as the plaintiff say that Blanche’s crime may be overlooked, though it cannot be oversmelled.

  Blanche did not come to a bad end. Life is not like that. She married a wealthy cattleman. Maybe he was like her, and maybe not. Maybe he was just lonely. And maybe he felt in her that superabundance of physical vigor which attracts us all. And maybe his blood ran away with him at the touch of her large, red, lecherous hands. There are times in all of our lives when we are such sad weaklings. And, on the other hand, he might be just such another as Blanche—hands on every woman he met who attracted him...there are such men. Huh! You’re tellin’ me?

  IT WAS HARD after Blanche left, carrying on with both household duties and school. Charley did all he could, but with a family of six, counting in Jeff and Tony, and four of them adult and t
wo of them babies, it was really two women’s jobs. For one week the school slowed down so that the work there was comparatively easy. It was spud-picking time, when all the farmers in the district, and all the farmers’ wives, and all the farmers’ children of sufficient years to be able to bend over and pick up a potato, were busy picking up potatoes. The school might well have closed, but there were three or four pupils whose parents had raised only potatoes enough for the family. They dropped out, singly, for a day at a time.

  It was spud-picking time on our farm. Besides the three men of our household, there was a crew of three more. And this is the time to tell of my beloved Limpy, who was eaten by cannibals, though he was not a missionary and never went to the Fiji Islands or anywhere. We loved each other deeply, and I cannot think of his soft brown eyes without a little sadness. Of course, I realize that if he had lived, by this time he would not only have been a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, but he would also have been long dead. That is the only consolation I have for his having been eaten by cannibals. I shall see him come bouncing toward me down some heaven-road, bleating his constant love for me.

  Charley found him lying beside the brown tobacco-weeds on the road from the school-house, as he drove back from getting me, four of us in the buggy, little red-coated Charles seated between me and Charley, and Walter at our feet. Something white lay at the side of the road. Drawing rein on Old Buttons, who was an angular brown horse, if you would like to know, Charley picked up a little lamb, one of whose hind legs was broken. We knew how it must have been done, for every day, and several times a day, great bands of sheep went past our farm, spilling through the wire fence in driblets of white roly-poly wool and flooding back into the road again. There were usually two men on horseback at the head of the band, immediately following the sheep-wagon, in which the men slept at night. The cooking was done outside. This sheep-wagon had a wide box built on each side, and a deeper one at the front, directly back of the driver’s seat. The lids of these boxes were hinged, and cooking utensils and all necessary things for camping were kept in them. The tops at night, covered with thin mattresses, or just blankets, were the bunks. Over the wagon was a rounded canvas cover.