Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  Almost as many rabbits are racing back past me as are being driven forward. I hear a shriek: “Mama! Mama! get him! Throw your club at him!”

  It is Rhoda’s voice. I turn in surprise, to see my Rhoda, curly hair flying in the breeze, a huge clod in her uplifted hand, and the terrible light of slaughter on her pretty face. At that moment I realize fully how men can murder each other under the excitement of battle. It is a vivid example of mob psychology. Here is my tender-hearted little girl, eager to slay the very creatures that had so awakened her pity but a few moments before.

  It is easy to understand why the Indians painted themselves in such a hideous manner. If I feel confident that my appearance will terrify my enemy, I can attack with much more power, for already I have begun his defeat through his eyes. Add to that the fear engendered through the ears, and there is little left to conquer. Ah, but not for a Crèvecœur! Neither sound nor sight nor any other thing can put fear in a truly brave individual. No wonder the Indians ate Crèvecœur’s heart. Fearlessness may be insensitiveness, but true courage is moral.

  The men and boys are now a compact group, in which I am not included, having lagged behind purposely. It is bad enough to hear the screaming of the little creatures as the men club them to death. I wonder if all animals are able to voice a cry of terror. I never felt much sympathy for fish because of their unresponsiveness, and I was therefore much impressed when a goldfish got caught between two rocks in his bowl and, not being able to go either backward or forward, began an insistent, thin little thread of whistle, or perhaps it might be called a fish’s scream, until its mistress released it. But I never heard a worm utter a screech. However, I am still keeping my ears open.

  The massacre is finished. The men and boys climb the fence and are some distance ahead of Rhoda and me. I know she would like to be with them, but she lingers behind with me out of filial affection. We have considerable difficulty in proceeding, as this farm is on the edge of the desert, with jutting hills of lava, impossible to irrigate and very hard to walk over. In many places we meet frozen rivulets of lava, almost rivers in fact, and pools whose infernal ripples are petrified just as they were at that far moment when this part of the country was a worse inferno than any hell ever imagined by man. As I walk over the black rivers of lava, somehow they appear red to my eyes, and I find myself wincing from contact with their fiery surface. I can hear the explosion of gases, and those horrific boulders I see in Hen Turner’s field have been this moment hurled through the air from one of those volcanic craters. I am always impressed with the feeling that all this took place such a short time ago.

  From this time forward we catch glimpses of the men only as we top some lava hill. We are now walking close to the fence along which the line of cars are parked, some of them comparatively expensive, glassed-in, but most of them humble open flivvers. In these cars are the women belonging to the rabbit-drivers, and there is a continuous wail, a mile long, from protesting infants. I seem to be the only woman there without a baby. Or, rather, my baby is in possession of a club as big as himself and is walking briskly in the rear of the army of hunters. I see his red sweater now and again as I peer ahead.

  We come at last to a level field of wheat, cropped to the ground by the rabbits. I can see the men making their next-to-the-last drive into the pen in the corner of the far fence. It is all over, thanks be! when Rhoda and I arrive at that point, but the odor from previous rabbit-hunts is prostrating. The men drive the next field, and then we all become aware that darkness has fallen.

  A short distance up the road is the farm-house where Hen Turner and his wife live. We all move in that direction, as it is there that the ice-cream is to be served. Charley decides to go back after Sagebrush Liz, where we left her napping beside Jerome Canal, and Rhoda and I go into the yard surrounding the house. It is now so dark that we cannot discern the features of a face three feet away. I decide to rest on a piece of lava rock which has been placed under a tree.

  You cannot appreciate what a tree means until you have lived in this treeless desert country. I well remember the first time my young children ever saw fully grown trees. Little Charles was looking out of the train window as we drew slowly into Salt Lake City. We passed close to some big trees. Excited and awe-struck, Charles pointed out of the window and asked, “Mama, what are those things?” It took me some moments to understand that he meant just big trees.

  Trees always seem to me so compassionate. As I lean my head back against the trunk of this tree, which with a few of its fellows makes an oasis in this part of our desert, I gain a sense of calm detachment which is heightened by the obscurity of the night. Out of my cave of darkness, in which I have become a dryad part of the poplar’s trunk, I can see the jovial group around the lantern that is set on a table beside the ice-cream freezers. Two busy women are dishing the cream into cones with teaspoons, so I am told, but I can see only silhouettes of those who reach out hands to receive the hunt refreshment.

  I suggest to Rhoda that she get herself a cone, and I see her flit among the waiting crowd. Presently she is back with her cone, seating herself at my feet. Next, a figure looms out of the night which I recognize as my son Charles. He, too, has a cone, and he seats himself beside me. He notices my lack and says, “I just got this, Mom, and I haven’t the face to ask for another just now, but I’ll get you one in a minute. I’ve already started eating this, or I would give it to you.”

  I notice Rhoda thoughtfully licking her cone. “Do you think you will ever absorb your cone by that method?” I ask her.

  “Every time I take a lick, I think I’ll give it to you,” she answers, solemnly.

  I surprise the old tree with a sudden laugh. “My darling girl!” I say. “Eat it all down. I wouldn’t touch a cone that any one else had begun to eat.”

  Instinct now leads little Joe to my arboreal seclusion. There are no promises of future delight from little Joe. As soon as he sees that I have no cone, he announces that he is going to get me one, which he does, a heaped-up one, such as a child must dream of receiving in Heaven. Charles, by this time, has finished his cone and is scouting for another. He returns shortly with another cone for me, with even more abundant frozen cream topping its mouth. This creates jealous emulation in the breast of Rhoda, and presently I am the awkward possessor of three of the fullest ice-cream cones I ever saw, for they are blurrily discerned through the night, as is everything else.

  The children have procured more cones for themselves, and we are all sitting together there, very happily, in the June darkness of that Idaho evening. I meditate that I must photograph upon my heart these quiet moments with my little ones, for there is nothing truer than that we die from day to day. It will be but a few moments until these children, sitting contentedly nibbling cones with me under this tree, will be two men and a woman, and so many things may have happened by then to change them.

  And now for Sagebrush Liz. Broken-hearted at having us leave her alone there on the desert road, she had burst, not a blood-vessel, but a wire of some kind. I think that was it, though I do not pretend to know anything about Lizzie’s innards. She might have a gizzard, for all I know. I am one of the few women in the United States who have never had a desire to drive a car. I am not even a back-seat driver. I have implicit faith in the man at the wheel.

  Steve Drake took his own car and towed Lizzie home. Ben Temple brought the children and me. It was eleven o’clock. I had a premonition that this was the last rabbit-drive I should ever attend.

  I FEEL that I have a real interest in the Greenwood Baseball Team as I gaze upon the large green letter that I have buttonholed with black silkoline on the shirt-breast of my fourteen-year-old son Charles, who is so large that he is allowed to play with the men. I can never get used to looking up at the son who was a babe in my arms but a few days ago.

  Charles has just returned from his daily swim, his blond curls still wet. The family are now ready to sit down to the kind of Sunday dinner they have ordered me to prep
are, a most horrific dinner to my notion, but one which they thoroughly enjoy and miraculously digest. Frankfurters, sauerkraut, dumplings, stewed potatoes, cherry pie, and milk. Joe prefers chocolate cake, and I prefer cream pie, all of which are ready, so we are contented.

  We have eaten amid much baseball talk. I wash the dishes rapidly and have soon donned a pale-pink linen dress, jade-green beads, and black hat, all out of one of those blessed relations’ boxes that still come to us. Rhoda wears a pretty blue dress, out of the same box, and Joe is proud in his beloved Levis, the overalls that made Strauss famous. The Baron wears corduroys and a pongee shirt. Charles is in all the glory of his baseball suit. Walter had gone, horseback, on some adventure of his own, always a quiet, thoughtful lad, with something wistful yet stanch about him. Mister, the dog, goes with us, wearing the regal robes of a pure-bred mongrel.

  Sagebrush Liz has been given a huge drink from the canal, and now she stands patiently waiting to take the family to the ball-grounds. She used to have a self-starter, but Lizzie is growing old, and the ambition of youth has worn out. Age is forced to effort by outward circumstances, and so Sagebrush Liz is compelled to action by cranking.

  Half a mile we go, through green farminglands, and then take a road through the brush, climbing a hill. On the top of the hill we can see eight cars parked, and we know that on the other side is the baseball diamond, surrounded by sagebrush and set in a natural amphitheater up the sides of which the sagebrush crawls.

  Sagebrush Liz tops the hill, and below us are more cars, with about a hundred people watching, while the two teams, Hazelton and Greenwood, warm up for the game. We drive down to a good position near the diamond, where Charley parks Lizzie and leaves me in order to visit about among the farmers. Little Joe and Rhoda go with him, while Charles joins the other heroes of our team.

  Simon Heminway drives down the side of the amphitheater in his truck. That truck represents everything that he owns in the world, and he is buying that on time. Today he is making the experiment of selling ice-cream cones.

  In front of me, sitting on the ground, are Hi Jones and his brother Hank, both from Hazelton. They are dressed entirely differently, each wearing a suit which looks as though it were draped over a six-foot pump; yet their attire produces so similar an effect that should they be suddenly snatched out of their clothes and away by Old Nick, as happened to the lady in the Ingoldsby Legends, I should recognize that apparel, no matter where it lay, as belonging to the Jones boys.

  It is a peculiarity of our sagebrush farming community that any woman over thirty is called Old Lady So-and-So, whatever her name may be, and that brothers, no matter how ancient, are referred to as the So-and-So boys. The sister of the Jones boys, though younger than they, was called Old Lady Page. I can see her, not far from them, and although she wears a slimpsy, cheap black dress, which shows a coarse, machine-embroidered white petticoat at the bottom, still her clothes actually give the impression of being one with those of her two brothers.

  Mrs. Thuringbird stands near Mrs. Page. She should have been born twins, as there is material enough in her to make two women. It is reputed that she can take a sack of potatoes and throw it into a wagon with ease. She has offered to wrestle any man in the district, and throw him into the canal to boot, but the men know better than to accept the challenge.

  Near these two women is Mrs. Bancroft, who milks twelve cows night and morning, besides raising a large garden, caring for over a hundred fowls, doing all her own housework, and sewing, washing, ironing, cooking for a family of six. Needless to say, she does not look like “Miss America.” She never owned a pair of gloves in her life. Vanity compacts were not made for her. One Christmas when Hib, our baker friend and co-farmer, had sent me an enormous box of chocolates, I offered some to her at our house, where she had come to borrow something. “Nobody never gave me no box of candy in my life,” she said, wistfully. Fancy being a woman and never to have had a box of candy given to you!

  Hen Turner is the only dressed-up farmer present. He wears a new light-blue suit, a hat set at a rakish angle above his ambitious ears, and orange shoes. Baldy Parsons is near him, a bit sunken about the mouth, as his teeth are now in his vest pocket, having performed their Sabbath function of enabling him to sing in Sunday-school.

  I forget to watch the crowd as my eyes catch the beauty of the Minidoka Mountains just peeping over the rim of the amphitheater. They are heavenly blue, with their long, graceful sweep set against a sky of lighter blue festooned with lacy clouds. Above my head a vague moon has ventured out in the daytime, lured, no doubt, by curiosity over the coming ball game.

  They are beginning to play. Red Britton is at bat, swinging picturesquely like the wings of the school-house windmill. Once, twice, does Red strike without effect; a third time he strikes so vigorously that he loses his balance and keels over on his back. This unexpected acrobatic feat is received with howls of laughter by the sympathizers of the Hazelton team.

  The next man up is allowed to take first base because of four bad balls. I may not report this game exactly right, but it was something like that. This man throws his bat to the ground just in time for the catcher to step on it as he swings his arm to throw the ball to the pitcher. He does an involuntary high kick with both feet, coming down on his back. It is now the turn of the Greenwood fans to roar with delight.

  Hi Jones and his brother Hank are rebels against Hazelton, so now they lie back on the ground and whoop in ecstatic agony. Then Hi sits up and yells, “Yuh done fine, Hazelton! Always go to bed where yuh air when yuh git tired!” Everybody roars again at that, and having made so fortunate a début, Hi, with the help of Hank, keeps up a running comment at the top of his lungs during the rest of the game.

  Simon Heminway has now begun to pass out the ice-cream cones. He is a short man, with small light-blue eyes, a stubby sandy moustache, and sandy hairs on his copper-colored hands. Whatever he says, he generally preludes with the expression, “As the old sayin’ is,” though he never tells what the old saying is. This trick of conversation always seemed most fascinating to me. I felt sure that some day one of those old sayings would surely come forth, quite involuntarily. But, as the old saying is, Simon never once betrayed the words of any of his old sayings.

  Attention of the crowd is much divided between the baseball game and the cones, these being the very first cones to appear at any of our outdoor sports excepting rabbit-drives. My attention is so diverted that it is brought back to the sagebrush diamond only by the sudden combined yells of the spectators who have managed to look as well as nibble. I catch the cause of the excitement just in time. The shortstop jumps and catches the ball in one hand, and in so doing he loses his balance and comes down on his hands and knees, squarely atop of the runner who is at that moment sliding for second. I give a little whoop of my own, my mouth full of ice-cream.

  And now I hear the pretty young daughter, lovely of eyes and lips, of one of our Southern States farmers say, “Oh! I just tipped my cone over, and it all spilled aout! Buddy, go over yander, and git me nuther one.”

  There soars a derisive jeer from the entire crowd as Benny Peters ambles toward the plate, the end of what should be a home run but which he is making a home walk. “Slide fer it!” they yell. “Hit the dirt! Oh! Oh! Oh! He’s afraid to slide fer fear-a mussin’ up ‘is suit!”

  I know Benny very well, his folks living about a mile from us, and I realize that the public charge is true. Benny, having been officially declared out, turns an angry face on his tormentors as he passes them to sit on the side-lines. He is six feet four inches tall, so that when he lisps, as he always does, and his expression of indignation happens to be, “Oh, prunths!” there is a combination of unusual effects.

  The fellow from New York City, freshly come to Hazelton and called “Cheese” because he is helping to establish a cheese-factory there, is now the butt of the crowd. “Lick the whey outen ‘em, Cheesy!” is the vociferous advice started by some unknown wit and adopted as the
ir own by the whole crowd.

  Cheese sees the ball coming high in the sky. He is an outfielder. He begins backing rapidly, with raised hands. Cheese has not yet learned caution in this our wild country. He back and backs, and the spectators, suddenly realizing what is bound to occur, begin to scream with joy. There is a huge clump of sagebrush directly behind Cheese. He is running backward, hands raised, eyes riveted on the ball, when over he goes, standing on his head on the other side of the sagebrush clump, feet waving in the air. Hi and Hank hug each other in a frenzy of joy, and I can hear their “Uh, huh! huh! huh! Uh, huh! huh! huh!” above the general roar. Any disaster to a city man is so much funnier than if it had been one of our sagebrush farmers. I find myself also delighted at this event.

  Simon Heminway is now sold out. I have helped this feat of merchandising by consuming three cones. I can hear the little Banks boy’s plaintive voice, “Ain’t they no more combs? Is they all gone?”

  Babe Pennybaker passes with his oldest offspring, the latter crying from every pore, as it were, his whole face wet with tears and melted ice-cream. “Want a comb! Want a comb!” he is bawling.

  Babe is from Arkansas. He has this youngster and a new-born baby and a beard. Nobody knows his first name. When he was about to be caught by the draft, he married, like so many United Staters preferring even marriage to war. But it was not such a slacker job for Babe. He had been going with his girl for years, the two keeping company since they were infants. Babe was such a cute little thing that his mother never called him by his real name; so now here he is still “Babe,” whiskers and all. But it seems perfectly natural to the colony of Arkansawyers who brought him along from their mountains where they chew each others’ ears off over slight offenses. So they all told me, but I noticed they had no ears missing.