“I’ll speak as I want in my own house,” Fred growled. “Germans can’t live in peace. They’re always trying to take over something. Take a look at Franz Muller over by Laramie. He buys out every ranch he gets a chance. Man can’t get enough. Somebody ought to do something about that.”
“Franz pays a fair price, from what I’ve heard,” Amelia said. “People don’t have to sell to him if they don’t want to.”
“He’s sneaky. Stands back until a man’s a little short on cash, then buys ’em out.”
“Everybody isn’t the same. German or Italian or English,” Joe said, managing neither to escalate the argument nor to back down.
“All I’m saying is if the Germans win over there, we could have the same trouble here.”
This was the most Fred had spoken on any topic since they’d arrived, and Liddie was taken aback by his vehemence. It troubled her to hear someone speak against all Germans, yet she knew Iowans who felt the same. The state Council of National Defense said it would be patriotic for schools to teach classes only in English, and it had begun to urge ministers to perform services only in English.
Amelia handed the paper to Liddie. “Hopefully, we won’t get in the war. Melvin would never have to go, but Gertie’s boy Sean is old enough. President Wilson says he’ll keep us out. I’d vote for anyone who can keep us safe.”
“I can’t believe you get to vote, Amelia! I’m jealous,” Liddie said. “When you wrote about voting the first time, I tried to imagine myself holding a ballot and pencil.”
“Hell, women vote the way their husbands do,” Fred barked derisively.
“I suppose many do,” Amelia placated him. “The women in the Wilson Club, though, they vote to protect their children. No matter how their husbands vote.”
Click.
Their train crossed the Missouri River back into Iowa. It was mid-October, and the trees still held fall color but were rapidly dropping their leaves. They’d been gone only a week, but Liddie’s eyes teared up.
“What’s the matter?” Joe asked.
“I’m glad to be home.” She laced her fingers into his.
Chapter 36
“You’ve been busy!” Liddie exclaimed when her eyes adjusted to the dim light in the barn. “It’s clean as a whistle.” He nodded—looking pleased, she noticed.
It was the day after they returned from Wyoming, and Joe was taking her on a tour of their new home. He had lived on the farm since he had returned to Iowa, but when she’d come to the farm with Minnie and Margretta to take stock of the house and measure for curtains, she hadn’t gone into the other buildings. This was their first day living on the farm as husband and wife.
A cow stuck its head through the slats of the pen, and Liddie stopped to scratch the tight whorl of hair on the animal’s forehead.
“Bessie milks good,” Joe commented. “You’ll be able to churn plenty of butter. Maybe even sell some.”
Liddie added milking the cow and making butter to the list of tasks that would fill her days. “Let’s go up in the haymow,” she said.
Joe climbed the ladder first, then helped her up. They walked hand in hand to the south end of the loft, where he swung open the small door so they could look out over the fields. The trees in the back forty had lost most of their leaves. The green of a few pines dotted mostly brown hillsides. Rows of corn stood ripe for picking.
“What a beautiful view.” Liddie breathed in the landscape. “I could come here every day.”
“I was right.” Joe wrapped an arm around her waist. “Everything I ever wanted is here.”
Liddie snuggled against his side, her heart full. “I’m so happy, Joe.”
Joe gathered her to him, kissing her lightly and then with more intensity. A sound like rushing water pounded in her ears. She felt him against her, and her body flushed with desire. Then she remembered.
“Wait!” She gasped, putting her hands on his chest, pushing. “No.”
Joe stiffened. “We’re married, Liddie.”
“We agreed.” She pushed more firmly. Until now, living with her self-imposed rules had been manageable. At Amelia’s, they had both been self-conscious. Doing anything on the train had not even been up for discussion. But now, in their own home, in their own bed, after days of touching him and smelling him and being so close, the want she felt was palpable. She could barely remember why she’d thought six weeks of celibacy were so important.
“Do you honestly think anyone will give us a second thought?”
“I will.” She gulped.
He dropped his arms. “I’m a man. Your husband.” His voice was husky. “You’re asking too much.”
As soon as his arms left her, she was bereft.
He latched the loft door shut, strode past without looking at her, and climbed down the ladder.
She scrambled after him. Outside the barn, she ran to catch up. “It’s only a few weeks.” She held on to his arm.
He stared at her, his eyes icy.
“Don’t be mad,” she pleaded. “Please.”
“You need to see the garden.” He strode toward the plot the renters had planted, now just a ragtag remnant of what it had been. She could see where there had been green beans. Someone had made an effort to dig the carrots, though they’d left a few behind. Pumpkins and squash were splashes of color against dried vines.
“Oh, look! There are still tomatoes!” Liddie exclaimed, overly enthusiastic, when they found a few fully ripe red fruits buried under a tangle of nearly dead vines, grass, and weeds. “I wish I had a basket.”
“Use this.” He stripped off his shirt and tied up the sleeves, fashioning a sling. “I’ve been eating them. Lucky we haven’t had a hard freeze yet.”
His bare arms, the muscles in his shoulders roused the same weakness in her legs she had felt when he kissed her in the haymow. Her desire was almost unbearable. She turned away as her cheeks turned crimson.
Joe erupted in laughter. “Would you rather I put the shirt back on?”
She shook her head without looking up. “No.” She busied herself picking tomatoes. At least he didn’t seem mad anymore.
He kicked at a dead vine, scuffed his boot at a mound of dirt. “I thought so.” He bent down, dug out two potatoes, and held them up like trophies.
She smiled. “If I had my camera, I’d take a picture of you.”
He stuffed the potatoes in his pocket. “We need to get these in the root cellar.” He’d lost his humor. “Besides, you can’t take a picture of everything.”
“Maybe I can.” She ignored his pique as she looked up at the sun. It wasn’t yet noon. “Are you hungry?”
“Always.” He put an acorn squash in the sling with the tomatoes. “What do we have to eat?”
“Minnie left enough meat and bread for another meal, along with lots of cookies. We’ll eat that now, and I’ll make something hot for supper.”
“I’m going to like having you cook for me.”
“I knew that was the reason you wanted to get married.”
“One of the reasons,” he agreed. Without warning, he pulled her to him and kissed her so deeply she felt faint.
When he released her, every muscle in her body quivered.
“I can do that, can’t I?” he asked. Then he headed for the house. She licked her lips, longing for more of the taste and feel of him.
When they finished eating, Joe pushed back from the table and crossed his legs.
“More coffee?” She rose to get the pot without waiting for his answer.
He sat in silence while she filled his cup. He drank half of it before he said, “You can’t take pictures of everything, you know.”
It took a moment for her to remember he’d said something like that out in the garden. She laughed. “I didn’t mean I really would. Only that I can think of so many pictures I want t
o take, to remember what we’re doing all our lives.” She dunked a cookie in her coffee. When she looked up, he was staring somberly into his cup.
“I’m serious.” He looked at her. “We have to watch our money. Farming isn’t like having a job in town. We don’t get paid every week or two.”
Liddie was mortified. She remembered the photos she’d taken on their honeymoon—how she’d said so flippantly to Amelia, the film’s the cheap part. Since she didn’t have access to a darkroom anymore, she’d mailed the exposed film to Kodak to be developed. It was the first time she’d had to pay for developing and the first time she’d had to ask her husband for money. Even working for both Mrs. Tinker and Mr. Littmann, she’d been able to save only a little. She had often used that extra money to buy material for gifts or photo paper for printing pictures. As a result, she came into the marriage as most women did, dependent on her husband for money to spend.
“All those pictures I took!” Her shoulders sank. “I didn’t think.”
“That was our honeymoon. I would never have told you no.” Joe squeezed her hand. “I wish I could give you everything. Right now. Every day. But I can’t.”
He drained the last of his coffee and walked out.
Liddie sat at the table for a long time, thinking about their conversations on the train. Joe had talked about how it worked to farm on shares. He’d tend Gibson’s livestock and they’d split the money made when pigs or cream sold. They could keep milk and cream to cook and make butter. A hog and half a steer was their share when it came time to butcher. They’d buy pigs of their own next year. She’d care for the chickens, milk the cow, make the butter, and make the most of the garden. Even as he’d said these things, it hadn’t soaked in. Not really. She’d been so interested in the scenery.
It seemed ridiculous that she’d grown up on a farm without understanding the basic aspects of farm economy. This was the first time she realized that she would not have more than egg and butter money of her own.
She remembered the coffee can on top of the pie safe in the Treadway kitchen, where her mother put her egg and butter money. Margretta dipped into the can to buy a bottle of vanilla or liniment from the Watkins man when he stopped at the farm. When they went to town, she used to give Liddie two pennies from the can for candy. Because of the coffee can, her mother did not have to ask her husband for money every time she needed it. The can was a bit of independence.
Liddie rubbed her face hard with the palms of her hands. She wished she could rub away her naïveté. Then she retrieved her camera from the sideboard in the parlor. She looked through the lens, rotating slowly in every direction. Then she opened the bottom drawer of the sideboard, wrapped the camera in a napkin, and put it away. Her fingers rested on the napkin for several seconds before she closed the drawer.
She went out to the front porch and sat in the rocking chair, her hands quiet in her lap as she looked out at the fields. She’d chosen Joe. If that meant no photography, then that was simply the reality.
Each day on the farm came fast upon the one before. Her days were consumed by cooking meals, doing laundry, and, from time to time, working with Joe in the fields or barn. Mostly she worked alone as she cleaned the house, ironed clothes, or baked. When she didn’t have anything else to do, she carried in wood to fill the box by the cookstove.
The end-of-the-season garden required both of their work. Joe dug the potatoes and helped gather squash and pumpkins to store in the root cellar. They worked fast to beat the first hard frost, gathering windfalls from under the apple tree, sorting out a bushel of the best ones for the root cellar. She would put the rest up.
She’d never canned anything herself start to finish, so she rang up her mother. They were fortunate Gibson had already run a phone line to the house.
“Hi, Minnie,” she said into the receiver. “Can you spare Mama tomorrow? I have all these apples to put up, and I don’t know where to start.”
“Mama and I would love to help. We’ll bring our pans and come over after breakfast.”
“You’re a lifesaver!”
At the end of the next day, Liddie stood surveying tidy rows of pint and quart jars filled with applesauce. Enough to last all winter. She was exhausted, but she felt the same sense of pride as when she saw Anna Caither wearing the dress she’d created. The jars were so pretty, they deserved to be photographed every bit as much as the dress.
It was at moments like these that she thought of Littmann. What would he say about the light? How would he think about the story these fruit jars told? On the one hand, she knew he would be intrigued by the photographic potential. On the other hand, she imagined he would dismiss the topic as too common to matter. She might miss talking about photography, but she did not miss being made to feel inadequate. Besides, these jars were worth a photograph. Still, she left the camera in the drawer.
“What are you going to do today?” Liddie asked Joe one crisp fall morning.
“Those trees in the fencerow east of the barn have been bothering me.” He speared a bite of pancake to wipe up the last syrup on his plate. “Some have to go. Some trunks will make fence posts where they stand.”
She’d heard her father call Osage orange trees a living barbed-wire fence. “I’ll help.”
“Weren’t you going to iron today?”
She grimaced. Ironing was only the first of many tasks she’d planned for her day. The ironing, the cleaning, the mending, the milking would still be there when she returned, but a day with Joe was far more enticing. “I’d rather be out with you.”
“It’s mighty hard work.”
“Better to have two of us at it, then.”
As Joe chopped and sawed, Liddie dragged branches into a pile. By noon, she’d piled brush as high as her head. While Joe coaxed a fire to life, Liddie ran into the house and made a picnic. They sat upwind of the fire, devouring cheese sandwiches and molasses cookies. The fresh air and exercise made them ravenous.
After they brushed away the crumbs, Joe motioned her to slide over and sit between his legs. She scooted until her back was against his chest, his arms secure under her breasts. For the next half hour, they sat in silence, watching the flames lick at the sky. The fire warmed her face and he warmed her back. A more romantic moment she had never imagined.
By the end of the day, the fencerow was as neat as any, and they were too tired to do more than tend to the livestock and collapse into bed. Joe was under the covers when Liddie cuddled up next to him.
“Joe?” she said.
“Mmm.”
“I was thinking.” She hesitated. “Maybe I don’t want to wait.”
She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
He was already snoring.
The next day, after putting a soup pot on the cookstove to simmer, she took the clean laundry to their bedroom. As she put the stack of freshly ironed hankies in her dresser drawer, she saw amongst her things the arrowhead Joe had given her the day her father died. She took it out of the drawer and sat on the edge of the bed. Rubbing the arrowhead between her fingers, she recalled Joe’s words—from the land to Papa to Joe to her. To Joe and her. When he came to the house at noon, she was still in the bedroom.
“Liddie! Where are you?” he called.
“In here.”
He came to the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you sick?”
She smoothed the bedspread beside her, inviting him to sit. “I found this today.” She opened her hand to reveal the arrowhead in her palm.
“You still have it.”
“I’ve kept it close. When I saw it today, it made me think about how you’ve always been here for me.”
“I try to be.”
“I want to be here for you, too.”
“You are.”
“I mean really here for you.” When she tilted her head toward t
he pillows, her cheeks felt like they were on fire. She worked the arrowhead over and over in her fingers.
“Ah,” Joe said. He took her hands and kissed their palms before folding her fingers over the arrowhead and putting her hands back in her lap. “Not for three more weeks, Liebchen. I don’t think we want anyone to count.” He stood.
Liddie’s eyes widened. “I thought . . . I thought you would want . . .” Embarrassed, she turned so he could not see the shame on her face.
He crouched in front of her. “Look at me, Liddie.” Touching her chin, Joe drew her face back toward him. “I do want to. You cannot imagine how much. But I know why you made this rule. I don’t ever want you to regret it.”
Liddie looked steadily into his eyes. She slid off the bed onto her knees, her face inches from his. “I love you, Joe.”
He brushed her lips with his thumb.
“Oh.” Liddie closed her eyes and sighed.
Then Joe kissed her. On the lips. In the soft place behind the lobe of her right ear. In the hollow at the base of her neck. He began to unbutton her dress. When his fingers grazed her breasts, the flesh between her legs felt as though it had been set on fire, and she gasped.
“Do you like how that felt?” he asked.
“I will never regret this,” she breathed.
Midmorning a week later, her mother called.
“Oh no! What happened?” Liddie held the receiver tight to her ear as she pressed her forehead to the wall.
“The doctor came, but there wasn’t anything he could do. He says she’ll be fine.”
“How is she really, Mama?”
“I told her she should rest, but she’s making a cake. She said she’ll feel better if she does something.”
“I’ll be over.” Liddie put the receiver back on the hook and stood there without letting go. Poor Minnie. Pregnant twice. Twice she’d lost the baby.
The timing, right before Christmas, couldn’t have been worse. Liddie stoked the firebox in the cookstove and checked on the roast. It would be ready when Joe came in at noon. She poured hot coffee into a quart jar, tied a scarf over her head, pulled a coat tight around herself, and went to the field where Joe was picking corn. As she stepped across the already-picked cornrows, she lowered her head, shielding her face against a biting north wind. The flat gray sky held the threat of snow. A bitter day to carry such bitter news.
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