Still has now thrust his pipe-stem under the thatched roof of his upper lip, and he mumbles decisively, “I ain’t got no predjesty ag’in’ no one. I ain’t got no cause to grum, fer I ain’t got no kids to school. But they’s sech a thing as too damn much ejecation. Now, that ole hen wants to spend the district’s money on sech things as fairy-tales...says the kids learns faster a-readin’ stuff they wanta read. Wants two teachers fer sixty kids. She can’t tell me nothin’ ‘bout it. I never went to no two teachers. An’ I reckon I’ve did jest as well as them there kids will with two teachers to learn them fairy-tales.”
Charley speaks: “Eight grades is a handful for one teacher. My wife could give them only ten minutes apiece for each class.”
“Sure!” exclaims Parish. “‘Cuz why fer? Cuz they’s learnin’ ‘em ever’thing on earth—makin’ baskets, and learnin’ ‘em fairy-tales, ‘n askin’ the kids sech fool questions ez, ‘Who’s Gov’ner, ‘n Pres’dent?’ They’ll know ‘thout no teacher learnin’ ‘em when they’s growed up. Besides, they’ll be diff’ rent then. ‘N who written Uncle Tom’s Cabin? I ain’t never knowed, ‘n don’t care effen I never know, ‘n not knowin’ about Uncle Tom’s Cabin ain’t never pervented me from puttin’ in a crop right. What was good enough fer us is good enough fer our kids. We don’t want no woman on the School Board. Makes me sick t’ see women a-pushin’ theirselves inta men’s jobs the way they’s a-doin’ these days.”
Hib has been making frying noises in the kitchen. I know how deft and expert his fingers are, and my appetite is rising at the thought. There will probably be some of his good apple pie, made with lots of butter circulating in the filling. Here he comes, asking Ben Temple to move so he can get at the table to set it. “Want any help, Hib?” asks Charley.
“Sit still,” says Hib. “It’s all O.K., Charley. Stay to supper, fellows?”
Strangely enough, all have been fed. We rarely had a meal without some one extra. I liked it. Farms are lonesome places. You either grow to love anybody and everybody who is willing to come in and eat with you and tell you the anecdotes of a lifetime of living without the contamination of reading, or you grow stingy and exclusive and hate any one who looks as though he might linger until mealtime. I knew a few farm women like that. They compelled their families to go without eating so long as any one outside the circle was in the home, and one woman, when forced to serve outsiders, always brought the dessert fruit to the table in the glass jar in which it was canned. At the end of the meal she would flourish this jar swiftly before the dazzled eyes of the eaters, breathlessly chanting, “Anybody want some peaches for dessert? Anybody want some peaches for dessert? Nobody wants peaches for dessert, so I won’t open the jar, and it will do for another time”; and she would rush off to the cupboard with the fruit jar, close it securely behind doors, and leave the room before any one could protest. I really believe that same jar of peaches answered for dessert in this fashion every time company dropped in for dinner.
Another knock. We always had conventions in the winter, but it is a stranger who is admitted this time. “Mr. Greenwood? My name is Dearborn. I represent Wetzel and Company of Seattle. If you will give me a few moments of your time, I believe I can supply you with anything in my line at from ten to fifty per cent less than you will have to pay any one else.”
The Baron is the heart of hospitality. He turns no one away. Sometimes we were cheated, as when an ingratiating old man stayed with us, sleeping and eating without charge, and next day stole several sacks of oats from the granary. The old scallywag thought I was deaf as well as lame, I suppose, and perhaps blind. I could hear the old rascal shoveling up the grain, for we were nearly out of it, and the shovel hit the planking of the floor, the sound of the scraping as he gathered it into heaps coming plainly into the room where I sat. Then I saw him bring out the sacks on his back, one at a time, and load them into his wagon. I had noticed how good he was to his team. And now I wondered if it was always at the expense of farmers who had not enough oats for their own teams. And I wondered, if I were God, whether I should say to the Recording Angel, “Don’t write down the stealings of that old scamp. He’s so kind to his horses.” Just sitting there all day made me try to solve such problems, while the farmers were doing the big jobs, such as settling the Government.
“Well, come in if you wish,” Charley told the salesman, “but I tell you beforehand that I can buy nothing from you.”
“Not even tobacco? Farmers buy tobacco when they can’t buy anything else. Can you show me the farmer so hard up he can’t buy tobacco?”
Charley laughed mirthlessly. “Tobacco is all that keeps me from going crazy on the farm. When I plow, if I can’t smoke, I chew. You can’t smoke sometimes. When we stack hay, I always chew. The person who condemns a farmer for using tobacco doesn’t know what it is to plow acre after acre when you’ve thought all your thoughts over and over and got sick of them. That’s why the farmer spends his time chewing, spitting, and plowing; chewing, spitting, and harrowing; chewing, spitting, and planting; chewing, spitting, and cultivating.”
Absently I paraphrased Shylock: “If you see us, do we not spit?”
“Talk about Outdoor Sports!” Charley was continuing. “There’s nothing like the American farmer’s Great Outdoor Sport—and also Indoor Sport—of chewing and spitting tobacco.”
“Yes,” the agent laughed, “the family can go without shoes, but the farmer must have his tobacco. Huh! Huh! Huh!”
“And, by God!” exclaimed Charley savagely, “if every farmer had what was coming to him, his family could have shoes, and he could have his tobacco without making it a reproach to him. He lives without everything that makes life attractive because he raised the bread for the world—penalized for feeding the world. And he has not even the moral right to use tobacco, his only solace.
“I can’t blame the farmers for buying tobacco,” the Baron continued. “There was Hunt Cleveland...went around all last winter with feet done up in gunny-sacks because he didn’t have money for overshoes, but he never quit chewing. If my crop had brought a just price, I could have given you an order. But I had to sell my hay for four dollars a ton. Giving it away! I am plowing it all up, except enough for my own use, and the sheepmen can go to the devil. My clover-seed was blown into Baldy Parson’s field. Sugar-beets and barley just made expenses. Potatoes a good price for a change, but crop a failure everywhere. Wheat less than it cost to raise. Farming is the greatest get-poor-quick scheme on earth. If it were only an occasional year...but it’s year after year, and it isn’t only in the West; the Eastern farmer suffers in the same way...no market when he is ready to sell...yet there is a real demand—which is satisfied at below cost of production.”
The Baron was surely wound up, for he did not stop at that. “You can’t make me believe there are any hungry people in the world. The middleman tries to make us think that the world does not want our crops. How else can you interpret the fact that we can’t get out of the crop as much as we put into it? ‘Discourage the farmer, and he will part with his crop for anything I may offer,’ is the slogan of the middleman. And he says to himself, ‘The farmer will keep right on plugging away, no matter what we give him...he doesn’t know how to do anything else.”
Another knock came at the door. “Say, Charley, what’s the chances of borrying yer clover-seed cleaner?” It was Simon Heminway, with sandy hair and skin the same color.
“Come in, Simon, come in. Sit down a bit. My clover-seed cleaner’s been one place and another the last two weeks, and I’ve got to use it myself tomorrow. You can have it the next day. Sit down a minute. This is Mr. Dearborn. He’s taking orders for groceries.”
“I seen your outfit in front of Berry’s a while back,” observed Simon.
“Oh, yes...Berry’s! I got out of there while the going was good.” The agent snuckled to himself. That’s the way he sounded. He snuckled to himself, drawing his chin down into his collar.
“They said they couldn’t give
me an order,” he said, the smile from his snuckling still on his face, “on account of the low price they got for their crop...same old story I meet everywhere. But Berry said he thought he would take some tobacco since I could give him such a good price on it. You should of seen his wife. She says, says she, ‘Jed Berry, how can you have the face to order more tobacco when we don’t know where the money is coming from to buy the childern’s shoes? They went barefoot all summer,’ she says, says she, ‘and their shoes is all wore out, and they can’t go barefoot in this snow,’ she says, says she. ‘Fifty dollars you spent for tobacco last year,’ says she. ‘Why, I hain’t spent that much on myself all the time I been married,’ she says, ‘an’ you’ll not chew and smoke up no fifty dollars this year,’ she says, says she. ‘Not and stay on the farm with me and the childern,’ says she. He never opened his head to her, but as it was getting a bit warm, I hit out before my feathers were singed.” He snuckled with rapid snucklings, like a locomotive getting under way, and with each snuck his chin tried to retire down his neck. He had been a farm boy in Nebraska, and got his job as a salesman because he could talk farmer.
“Yeh, that’s Old Lady Berry,” commented Simon Heminway, drawing forth a new blue bandana, on which he blew his nose lustily. I was fascinated. Two new blue bandanas in one day. The handkerchief was withdrawn from his nose and deposited in his hip pocket, and at the same time he sloughed his sheepskin coat and brought forth from some pocket the inevitable red can and his pipe. I stared at his nose. Yes, it was blue. I must warn Charley again about those dreadful blue bandanas.
Simon was puffing a light in his pipe, and at the same time, though it seems impossible, he was repeating, “Yeh, that’s Old Lady Berry. But as I was sayin’ to Daisy, you can’t hardly blame her much. She owns that farm herself, from her Ma that died on her, and has worked in the field every year, besides doin’ the work after them younguns.”
“Old Lady Berry!” exclaimed the agent in surprise. “Why, she didn’t look a day over forty.”
“She ain’t that. She ain’t a day over thirty. She wuz married when she wuz sixteen. Her an’ her Ma what died on her kep’ a eatin’ joint up to Shoshone. When her ole womern died on her, the girl up ‘n married, ‘n taken what cash the hash-joint brung, ‘n bought this here farm of hern. She’s had t’ boss the ranch ever since.”
“Lord save me from a bossing woman!” It was the Baron issuing a proclamation. “If my wife tried to boss me, I would take to smoking days and chewing nights, and if this farm ever paid anything, I’d gamble.”
Simon blew a cloud of smoke. “It does make a feller sore,” he agreed. “As I wuz sayin’ t’ Daisy, I ain’t much on hellin’ round, but effen I was hooked up to Ole Lady Babcock, I’d be wusser’n Bab fer cussin’. She plowed nearly all that there eighty acres of theirn...wore a pair of Bab’s overalls while she done it; pitched hay, mowed clover, and, as I wuz sayin’t’ Daisy, done more work than Ole Bab done in all his life. He’s kindly a putterin’ ole fool. Never could do nothin’, but always spent solid hours a-doin’ it. One time I was cuttin’ through their place to hunt my sorrel mare, ‘n I heered the old lady say to Bab—he was a-tryin’ t’ mend the binder—‘Why’n’t you put that there nut here?’ Ole Bab riz up and yelled, ‘You git the hell outen here!’ an’ you can take it from me, she git!”
The men puffed, meditatively. I could see that on the battleground of each male mind were females being vanquished. “That shore would make me sore,” continued Simon, preceding the words with a puff of smoke. “It shore would make me sore if the Missis called me down the way Berry’s ole womern done before folks. As I wuz sayin’t’ Daisy, it may be that Ole Lady Pringle ekals a horse fer work...she boarded her family and the nine road-workers fer weeks...but she works her jaw too much t’ suit me. I reckon Bert tries her consid’able. He’s a awful dunderhead. But she shore can make the hot cakes. I’d sooner eat a decotchment-a hot cakes after her ‘n any womern I know. You bet Bill Sellers’s wife don’t dast say nothin’ to him. Effen she done it, Bill ud offer to knock ‘er down. As I wuz sayin’ to Daisy, seems hard she has to work like she does, but she ain’t never knowed nothin’ else. Her pa wuz a good-fer-nothin’. Lived in a shack up Goose Creek, and they’d a-starved t’ death savin’ it wuz fer her ma’s garden ‘n chickens ‘n the hog the ole womern raised every year. When Bill Sellers’s wife married Bill, she didn’t ixpect nothin’, ‘n she got it!” Simon laughed loudly at his own joke, slapping Stillton’s knee and leaning forward to inquire with his light-blue eyes of the circle of farmer faces whether they had ever heard the equal of that wit?
Hib had set the steaming dishes on the table; the expectant little boys were struggling up into chairs, eager eyes appraising the feast as they got into position before their plates and cutlery. Charley lifted Rhoda to her high chair. While Hib was giving a general invitation to the visitors to eat, it being declined because all had supped, the Baron supported me, my legs practically useless, to my chair at the table.
My mind was thinking, in the perverse idleness said by some old scribe to be the devil’s workshop, that if I was to be chained to my rocking-chair much longer, I too would take to chewing and spitting and cussing, and maybe helling around a little in my imagination; and I would have a few things to tell, inaudible perhaps to any but myself, about what I think of men who boss their women, under the impression that having been born male has somehow constituted them, ex officio, little Vice-God Almightys.
THE MEAL is over, and, yes, it ends with some of Hib’s delicious apple pie, flaky of crust, with melted butter swimming among the transparent amber slices of apple. I make an island of my section with thick sweet cream. Barbarous and unetiquettical, I suppose. But who cares? I am a wild, bad woman, chained to my chair, my one dissipation that of eating thick cream with my apple pie.
Again I sit in my rocking-chair, the beloved one Charley bought me the Christmas Walter was born. I was going to keep it, as it was then, all my life; but two years after this very night, Eb Hall talked religion to me so hard, emphasizing his words by swaying back and forward so violently, that suddenly, long legs waving wildly as they described an arc, Eb went completely over, breaking both rockers off squarely at the first joint. I think it is always a great mistake to argue religion so seriously that you break the furniture doing it. Eb was a good man, and I liked him, but I did wish he had been sitting on the red-hot kitchen range instead of my pet rocking-chair.
My chair was as uncrippled as I was crippled when I was helped back by Charley to its lap. On this night I sat beside the sewing-machine, upon which the Baron had placed one of the glass lamps for my convenience. It was the one with the bowl looking like crystal bubbles. I love old-fashioned glass lamps. I never minded the daily chore of filling our three lamps with kerosene, trimming the wicks—job for an expert: lighting, trimming, relighting, squinting each time, until the ecstatic triumph of a perfectly even flame; then washing chimneys and lamps with hot suds, pouring hot water over them, and polishing them until they shone like the fabulous gems in the Sesame cave. In Cabell’s Jurgen—yes, I read it—he speaks of a part of Heaven which smelled of mignonette, where a starling was singing. I am sure there is a part of Heaven smelling of kerosene where the beautiful glass lamps are burning.
The table is cleared, and the dishes washed. I cannot see him from where I sit, but I know that Hib has safety-pinned a dish-towel in front of his overalls and is smoking his pipe as he washes the dishes, Walter drying them. A few more farmers are added to the convention, Parish leaving, Dan Jean appearing briefly, only to announce that he guesses he’d be gougin’ along. Stillton is again reminding the women of their inferiority. He doesn’t mind that I am present. Really, he likes me pretty well, which makes me wonder whether to be proud or insulted, considering his views of my sex.
Charles is a little fellow, but one by one he is able to bring me books from the big case, the last relic of our more prosperous days. Gone now the velvet carpet, followed by the gra
ss rug, and now the covering is a linoleum just like a rug, as the advertisement says, and as every woman thinks if she has gone crazy and half blind. Bedroom rug worn out, and gone. Going, going, gone. Almost everything gone now. Painted bare floors...well, Mrs. Curry didn’t even have paint on the floor of the chicken-house where she is so cheerfully living.
My dear book friends! What should I do without you? They are piled here on the machine beside the glass lamp. In a moment I shall be far away from these domineering little Vice-God Almightys of the farms. Paradise Lost—still a favorite of mine, though not so revered in spots. I often dip, as now, like that dabchick mind of Mordrum Carbine’s, but I nearly always bring up a pearl. And can this be one?
...though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he, and valor formed;
For softness she, and sweet, attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
That’s not what your wife thought, John, and she ran away from you, so that you wrote a ponderous tome on divorce because of her desertion. I don’t know that I blame her. Why should you be hobnobbing with God, while she must be content with you?
The farmer Stillton
And poet Milton
Are brothers under their skins.
Here’s my trusty Tennyson, though I do think that consumptive girl might have used an alarm clock instead of bothering anybody to call her, Mother dear, even if she was to be queen of the May—looking so beautiful, as she did, coming down with tuberculosis, and laboring under the delusion, as she later did, that Robin was likely to pine away at her death, and then cribbing that last line from the Bible...
When the wicked cease from troubling and...
Let’s get the taste of Johnny’s line out of our mouth. What’s this of yours?
Annie Pike Greenwood Page 17
