Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  I do not know how long I stood there, petrified, “Statue of a Woman with a Broom.” When I came to myself, my eyes rested on the stairs which ran up one side of the living-room, with their plain banister of a slim square piece of timber. Huddled there, chin resting on fists, elbows on knees, was Walter. It was taking him longer to come from under the spell of that music than it had taken me. His would have been my case as a child, but the world of practical living had racked me into a pained apprehension of its existence from my native planet of music, art, literature.

  I had fourteen dollars I had earned writing. Once again this was dedicated to the buying of a new summer dress. But that pitiable figure on the stairs—my beloved first-born! I love all my children, each holding a place in my heart sacred to that child alone. I am hurt and healed by what happens to each of my children in a different way with each child. My beloved eldest-born, you will never know how I have brooded over you in secret; what tears I have shed inwardly for your frustration; how I would have laid myself, body and soul, on the altar of sacrifice for you, had it been necessary or possible.

  I spoke to the Baron about having Pushkin give Walter lessons. Pushkin himself, feeling, I am sure, his inadequacy as a farm hand, had suggested this means of retaining his place on our farm. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. Fourteen dollars might begin payment on some kind of fiddle, and in the evenings, after my day’s work, I could sit down at the old typewriter and plug out something more that would keep the instalments going. But Charley said positively no. He would not have Walter fiddling, and he would no longer have Pushkin on the place. The Russian was worthless as a farm hand, he said, and so no longer welcome to his board and room.

  Two excuses I have for Charley: for one, he had keenly sensitive ears, and for the other, farm men are never interested in the pursuit of the arts for their children. It is the farm women who lift their children above the soil. All around me, out in that sagebrush wilderness, the last frontier, bounded on all sides by what we call civilization, what aspiration there was came from the women folks—for their children. Many children in the Greenwood District were studying music after a fashion, though it must be admitted that their performances convinced me they were almost all paralyzed in their music sense. Still, who will say that trying to produce music is not better than sinking into a milking-plowing-chawingterbaccer machine?

  There were those two excuses for Charley—not very good ones though, for he might have borne the fiddling of his own child, and, fine as he was in so many ways, he should have been of superior fiber to the majority of those stubble-bearded, manury-heeled farmers. No! I will excuse him no longer. Only for those wrongs against me, of blindness to my natural atmosphere, do I forgive him, for I have not a doubt that I wronged him just as grossly. We married folks do that to each other. Whenever I hear of one in a marriage who claims perfect happiness, I wonder how much that happiness is costing the other one. Marriage is give and take—sometimes joy, very often misunderstanding and pain.

  I do not excuse myself for what happened then to Walter. I was to blame for not raising proper hell until I got my way about that opportunity, which, God forgive me, never came again. I was very mild on that farm. I can recall only a single occasion on which I showed temper, and of that I have forgotten the reason. But I was so mad that I flipped my dish-towel in the direction of the Baron. The thing that is most impressed on my memory was Charley’s look of stunned astonishment that I should be showing that unusual temper and in such an extraordinarily vulgar manner. I retired at once to the kitchen, and there I doubled up with laughter. Oh, I have fought with people, but not with my relations. I flew at my brother just once in all my life, and that not many years ago. There was silence between us for a moment; then we both burst out laughing.

  There are occasions when to blow up may mean the salvation of some one—yourself, or the defended one, or even the one blown up. Especially the one blown up. In my married life on that farm I did not blow up enough. That does not mean I failed to act. I am an introvert made extrovert by fate. I am never content to be a mere spectator. I want to use as much of me as possible in doing something every minute. But I am patient.

  It took me eight years to lie down on the job when no fence was put around the big kitchen-garden I raised. I did that stupendous labor, with a hoe and my hands, for eight years, along with all my other work, and watched the horses trample it, the hogs root up the potatoes, the cows eat my Golden Bantam corn; the chickens scratch up my seed and peck the cheek of every beautiful tomato. I was more patient than Job, for Job was the least patient individual in all literature. He reproached God, and quarreled with him, and complained, until God is the one who should be called patient that he did not snuff Job out, instead of Job getting the praise because he was bearing, impatiently, that from which he could not get away.

  At the end of eight years I amazed Charley by no begging for seed, no yearning over the soil of the garden-place, no mention of growing things. I did not even send to Burpee’s for a catalogue, but since for years I had patronized them, they sent one anyhow. I did not even open it. I did not rise at four, through a passion for growing things. I actually lay in bed until five in the morning. When I rebel, I rebel. I was through. Even a fence would not have impelled me out to the garden. I had suffered too much. I WAS THROUGH.

  I did not have eight years to form that iron resolution which would have meant the beginning of a musical education for Walter, if not for a profession, then for a glorious release. I blame myself for not going ahead, anyhow, and having Walter take lessons under that all-but-genius, Mischa Pushkin. But I was young, and Charley was my husband, and I was always thinking, “I must be as good a wife as...”

  Just how far should the will of one partner in a marriage be forced upon the other where their children are concerned? There can be no arbitrary decision. But it seems to me now that every marriage should be a dedication to the future of the children of that marriage. What greater thing to achieve in life? Not in indulgence, but certainly in self-sacrifice, lies the great opportunity for noble action given to parents, who must expect nothing in return.

  Everyone should be educated from birth in the psychology of sex, marriage, and parenthood. Had Charley and I been trained in our duty to our children, he would have agreed with me, as I should have had enlightenment enough to insist, that Walter be given lessons by Mischa Pushkin, him who had been commanded, when a child, to play before the Czar, who had accompanied with his violin most of the great singers of our day—I saw his press-clippings. But now, forever, I am haunted by the memory of that pathetic little fellow, crouched day after day and hour after hour on that primitive staircase, listening to the music of Pushkin’s violin. My beloved eldest-born, you cannot forgive me. I do not deserve it. I do not blame you.

  The surge of the hunted aliens began to sweep over our sagebrush land its flotsam and jetsam of farm hands of every description. It brought to us English George, conscientious objector, and Russian-Pole Gus, with unpronounceable last name. Never shall I forget the terror that seized me at sight of Gus. Charley had seated the two young men—Gus a good deal older than George—in the living-room. I did not know they were there, and as I took into the room a glass lamp that I had been filling with kerosene and polishing until it was like a diamond bowl in my hands, I saw Gus for the first time. I was so terrified I simply stood still and stared at him. His appearance seemed to me most barbarous—the slightly oblique black eyes, broad, high cheek-bones, mysterious atmosphere of power.

  English George worked for us only a few days and then was transferred to a help-needing farmer. Gus was on the plow at once. He took Pushkin’s place. Evidently Pushkin had never handled horses before and was a little afraid of them. While plowing he exasperated Charley and bewildered the horses by a continual stream of “Get up!...Whoa!...Get up!...Whoa!...Get up!...Whoa!...” It was ruining the horses, so Charley had to take him off the plow. “Put him to work in your garden,” he said.

 
; Put him to work in my garden! I said nothing. I never did make objections in those days—and the garden fence I wanted I never got. When the Baron told me to put Pushkin to work in my garden, he revealed that he had forgotten two things: what expert care is necessary in the raising of vegetables, and that the family must depend on that garden for its food, winter and summer, except for meat, butter, eggs, milk, and flour. The exceptions look bigger than the rule, but try living on those things alone and discover what it means. We literally lived out of the garden in the summer, eating almost no meat then excepting when there was help—and again, the exception seems bigger than the rule. Meat meant big pot roasts to be cooked in the pressure canner at threshing or haying or spud-picking. The rest of the time we ate bacon and chickens, I killing, picking, and cleaning the fowls.

  I watched Pushkin sow handfuls of lettuce-seed in great gobs and sprang upon him as though stang by two bees. “I’ll sow the lettuce,” I said, fixing my mind on his heavenly music in order to born the self-control necessary for any one who loves to garden—sowing lettuce-seed in great gobs...my heavens!

  “You plant these onion sets,” I suggested gently, punching holes with a stick at the right intervals along the row, so that by no chance could he be led to sow the onion sets in gobs.

  There we spent an hour or so, my Minneapolis Symphony violinist and I, the sweet air rolling up to us from the greening valley. His mother had been of the Russian nobility. I wondered if she saw him now, down on his knees near the farmer’s wife, thrusting onion sets into the fertile volcanic ash with his violin fingers.

  Charley and I were consumed with ambition to do everything possible that would help to feed the world. I had encouraged him to add what was known as the Wolf Forty to our one hundred and twenty acres. It was a beautiful piece of property, adjoining our farm on the east. Every bit of Charley’s time must be given to irrigating so large a ranch—though not large as compared with most Western farms. He had to have hired hands and could get none. Pushkin was our first hope, a hope which fizzled out. Then the full tidal wave struck the Greenwood District, and the farm lands swarmed with the hunted aliens.

  Counting Pushkin, we had at one time four farm hands, two sleeping on some hay in a wagon, one in the granary, and the violinist upstairs. The Government told us we could not be patriotic if we used sugar and flour for cakes and pies, so my burden of cooking was somewhat lessened. I had only to feed ten people three hearty meals a day—country meals, not piffling city pick-ups. Three hots every day. Breakfast: stacks of waffles or hot cakes; French fried or German fried potatoes (but we must not mention the word German); bacon; eggs in any form; muffins, biscuits, or toast; jam. Breakfast was begun with stewed fruit of some kind. We rarely saw oranges or grapefruit, such novelties being festive events for the children. Bananas, too, were rare. Dinner at noon was a big meal, almost such as the city families have on our eating holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Supper was almost as big, with the addition, for dessert, of oatmeal, cooked to custard in the pressure canner. And coffee three times a day.

  I had been making pies and cakes almost daily, with several big bakings each week of bread, rolls, and fancy breads. I had enough to do, even relieved of pastries, for there was the big kitchen garden to hoe and irrigate every day; the chickens to set and hatch and care for; the washing and ironing for those ten people; and the added mending, for I could not see even the hired hands going around in rags when a few minutes and a needle would set them right.

  Much of the mending I did on the sewing-machine we had bought in Kansas at a sale. I felt a little guilty every time I used that sewing-machine. The million-dollar sugar-factory had imported the Russian-German beet-raisers under contract. When some of those families thought they were not being dealt with fairly, they tried to leave the country, and the sugar-factory seized their household goods and sold them. My machine had been run by one of those Russian-German women.

  One of our hired hands was an Arkansawyer who had never laid eyes on an irrigation ditch until two weeks before Charley hired him; one was an English conscientious objector; one was an I.W.W. who was also a Russian Bolshevik, a disciple of Trotsky; and there was Pushkin, who had never before eaten at table with the proletariat.

  There were many heated arguments at the table between Pushkin and Gus whenever Charley happened to be absent, each claiming to be the better Trotsky man. In one of these I accused Gus of belonging with the I.W.W., a fact which he admitted with a smile. I told him to tell Mr. Greenwood, not being sure whether he should remain. Gus was splendid help. Charley had to have help. Therefore the discordant views of Gus were overlooked.

  I shall be forever grateful to Mischa Pushkin for an unconscious service he rendered me. When I found how useless, even destructive, he was in the garden, I would no longer allow him there, taking over the irrigation myself. His only idea of irrigation had been to flood the garden, making it necessary to cultivate, with rake and hoe, every inch of the surface. Besides, many plants and seeds were washed away.

  By going out to irrigate while the two babies were asleep, leaving the noon dishes to he washed until I was through, I could manage very well. It was a few days before Pushkin left us that he came out of the kitchen door on his way to visit his in-laws down the road of the Lincoln Highway, and as he turned the corner of the house, he called to me, “Mrs. Greenwood, your baby is crying.”

  I was surprised at that, for I never had crying babies. Little Joe had been made comfortable in bed and was asleep when I left, and he would undoubtedly go back to sleep. I hated to leave the irrigating. The water had not crawled entirely the length of the corrugations, and, besides, the work of irrigation is most fascinating.

  I had put Joe to sleep in the bed that stood in the southeast corner of the bedroom, and Rhoda’s bed was in the northwest corner. After pulling the blinds down I had opened the window at Joe’s head about six inches. When Pushkin said my baby was crying, I was surprised. I had left him asleep, and, besides, I did not have crying babies.

  The irrigating had to be done, so my first inclination was to stay in the garden until the water reached the foot of the corrugation, spaced according to the room needed for the vegetables planted. Everything in a garden fascinates me—irrigation, planting, spraying, picking the big worms from plants...and under any other condition I am demoralized at the sight of a worm. It would not hurt the baby to cry....I had made him comfortable, and he would go back to sleep....But my feet carried me to the house without my own volition.

  Something must be burning in the oven. I looked in. No, nothing. I opened the bedroom door. A great cloud of black smoke gushed out of the room into my face, and I could see the mattress beyond a mass of leaping flames. Of course, my first instinct located my babies, seated side by side in the other bed and crying in fright. Neither of them had any experience with fire, and nothing had been said to make them fear it. Yet they knew.

  Without reasoning, I beat down the flames with my bare hands, working so rapidly that the fire was smothered. How I did it I cannot now understand. Then I seized the smoldering, smoking bedclothes and dragged them into the yard. Back I sped, and the mattress was dragged out in the same manner, the great burnt hole still red and smoking. Ordinarily I could not have lifted that mattress. Frenzy provided the power, the power of the insane, which I had known from a very little girl, when one of my father’s asylum patients dragged him the length of a long ward by his beard.

  I went back for Joe and Rhoda. We three sat down upon the sloping door of the dirt cellar, our hearts still beating wildly, and I know I must have been as white as those two poor, terrified babes. Falteringly Rhoda told me how she had found a match in her father’s dressing-gown—the gorgeous one I had bought him for Christmas the second year of our marriage. I had taught her to bring all matches to me, for with the farm men all smoking around the place there were matches scattered everywhere. I had always thrilled her little heart with my extravagant praise for this act. She had c
alled and called, and I had not come, and then she thought of striking her find. The flame had bitten her little fingers, and she dropped the match on the inflammable cotton-lined quilt. There was immediately a burst of fire like an explosion, which had sent the baby girl out of her bed to her brother, and there the two clung to each other and screamed.

  So I thanked Mischa Pushkin, little as he knew what had happened, and little as he deserved my gratitude, in one sense. A day or so later he left. English George was already gone, but the Arkansawyer and Gus remained as our farm hands, the Arkansawyer now going home nights to his little family. They were campers, and they lived in a covered wagon, one of the last of the Westward, ho! caravans to the last Western frontier. Gus preferred to continue sleeping out-of-doors, but he liked to talk to me in the cool summer evenings, while I mended.

  Charley was always so tired when he came from his long day’s work that he would go to sleep over his paper or magazine, sitting in his big chair near Gus and me. I was on one side of the table, in my white, black-dotted house dress, wearing my little white cap on my fluffy blonde hair, my needle weaving in and out. Gus was on the other side of the table, his wild, barbarous handsomeness no longer wild and barbarous to me. I could no longer imagine how I had come to be so frightened of him at first sight.

  Gus was a graduate of Columbia University; his friends wrote for the magazines I most adored. That was not idle boasting, for every word he spoke bore the authenticity of truth. As he talked, my needle would pause, and I would lean forward on the table toward him, with what expression I knew not in my eyes. Books, plays, music, art—Gus had come from that world which I loved and for which I was starved. And I think he found in me something of an oasis in that wilderness.