by Ruth Glover
“I don’t know about that,” he answered, preparing to remove the gate from the rear of the wagon and retrieve the items he had purchased, as well as Tierney’s things. “I suppose I’ve been a little suspicious of that Lemuel . . . he was too footloose. I wondered what he was doing way out here on the prairie, looking for work in a little burg like Fielding. He seemed shifty-eyed—”
“Come now, Will, you’re dredging up things you didn’t see before. You needed help; he needed work. It’s about as simple as that. Anyway, he’s gone. Supper’s waiting. It’ll be served up by the time you get the team cared for.”
Buster was in his mother’s arms, his tired head on her shoulder, as they turned toward the house, entering, as in all farm homes, through the kitchen.
The house, which Tierney had studied as they approached it, was tall and narrow, jutting up on the landscape like a sore thumb. Still, it wasn’t a soddy, though she could see one nearby, obviously in use for one thing or another, perhaps as the domicile of the missing rascally Lemuel.
“Miss Caulder,” Lavinia Ketchum said, “your room is at the head of the stairs. There are only two rooms up there, and you’ll see that one of them is Buster’s. He’s been down here, with us, until now. It’s a good time to make the change, while you’re here, and before the new baby comes. Why don’t you go on up, wash if you wish, then come on down, and supper will be ready. I’ll feed Buster, if he’ll eat, and Will can carry him up; he’ll hardly know he’s in a new bed, he’s so worn out.”
Tierney did as instructed, carrying with her the bag that contained what she would need to tidy her hair. Her own room for the first time in her life! A small room, simply furnished but clean, with a white coverlet on the bed and a colorful rag rug in front of it. Besides a dresser, there was a small table and one chair, and Tierney could picture herself writing to Annie this very night before crawling into that downy bed and dropping off to a much-needed sleep.
Will was drying his hands and face at the washstand when Tierney came into the kitchen again, and he was saying, “I see a few of them scrabbling around in the dust outside the run. All of them in that pen have probably been out, but some of them have gone back in, now that it’s getting dark. I’m leaving the door open, hoping others will join them. I think there were a hundred or so in that pen, and there are fifteen in there now. Before I go to bed I’ll go out and close the door. Those that are still out, we’ll try and round up in the morning.”
“It could have been worse, Will,” Lavinia was saying as she filled a gravy boat.
The supper—fried chicken, of course—plentiful and tasty, was served at one end of a kitchen that was nothing more nor less than a lean-to on the side of the house. The main floor seemed to consist of two rooms, like the upstairs, probably the “living” room, and the parents’ bedroom. Most of the living, however, would be done in the roomy kitchen.
Supper over, Will carried the sleeping Buster upstairs, followed by Lavinia. Tierney, very naturally, cleared the table, located the dishpans and soap, and found, to her surprise, that a pipe had been run into the house from the tank at the side of the windmill. Cold, ice cold, but the water in the kettle was hot, and Tierney soon had the dishes soaking and, weary though she was, took satisfaction in the familiar task. Worldwide, she realized—and found the thought a good one—women were washing their family’s supper dishes—except in China, where they were washing the breakfast bowls, she supposed.
Before she was finished with the cleanup Lavinia had returned, showed Tierney how and where to put the remains of their supper, talked to her about rising time and breakfast, and explained what her duties would be—household tasks almost entirely, with some garden work, and sharing the care of Buster.
“That’s it, more or less,” Lavinia said, adding ruefully, “as you can tell, there is an emergency with the chickens, and that’s the way schedules can change from hour to hour. I won’t be much help where the chickens are concerned, I’m afraid—all that leaping around, grabbing, wrestling with the creatures.” She indicated the small bulge below her apron.
“And anyway,” she added, “one of us will always have to keep an eye on Buster. He’s been warned many times about wandering away, and, as you notice, we have the grass cut way back in order to give us a good-sized clearing . . . but it’s always a danger.” Her eyes looked haunted as she spoke, as if the idea of her child lost in the grass was ever with her.
“But back to the chickens. You’ll be needed, with Lemuel gone, to help round up what can be salvaged. Chickens are quite domesticated, it seems to me, and are drawn back to their pen oftentimes. Still, some will have wandered into the grass, looking for bugs and so on, and may never be found.” She sighed. “The situation could have been much worse, of course, and so we’re grateful for small blessings. Now,” she added, “tell me about yourself. Did you, for instance, come over by yourself? And do you have family for whom you’ll be lonesome? We want you to feel at home with us, Miss Caulder, if you can.”
Tierney took the straight-backed chair at the side of the table beside Lavinia Ketchum, feeling greatly relieved of the burden of strangeness she had been prepared to feel in such a lonely, out-of-the-way place. But she already realized that she would be busy, that Mr. and Mrs. Ketchum were not ogres, that the home was pleasant, the child lovable. What more could she want?
Robbie! The name sang in her heart, but like a dirge. The busier she would be, the better!
“My best friend came with me. Happily for both of us she has work in Saskatoon, not all that far away I realize, now that I’ve had a chance to see distances here—”
“We’ll see to it that you get to Saskatoon once in a while,” Lavinia said kindly, and Tierney’s heart, broken and longing for Robbie a moment ago, filled with gratitude for this small thoughtfulness.
“But first,” Tierney said, “willna ye call me by my name—Tierney? I’m nae used to bein’ called Miss Caulder and have nae desire to get used to it.”
Lavinia—features perfect as to size and shape yet missing beauty and individuality—smiled, and her face lit up. Her beauty lay in her kindness; her charm lay in her thoughfulness. “I love your accent, Tierney. Yes, I’ll call you that, and thank you for asking it. I’d be pleased if you would call me Lavinia. Do you think the Society would mind? I know one of their rules is that we call you ‘Miss Caulder’—did you understand that?”
“Aye, but I dinna know why.”
“I think it has to do with allowing you your dignity.”
“I dinna feel all that dignified.” Tierney looked down at her skirt and waist and grimaced.
“Please round up what you need to have laundered, Miss . . . Tierney. There’s no reason we can’t take time tomorrow to freshen up all your things. Schedules aren’t sacred around here, as I have already mentioned.”
And so the two young women enjoyed a few minutes of pleasant talk. Tierney’s lonely heart drank it in, and she felt assured that Lavinia Ketchum enjoyed it also. To think she, Tierney, had arrived to find—not only suitable work—but a friend. Or so it seemed at this juncture. Tierney wisely decided to retain some “dignity” after all and keep ever in mind that she was the domestic here, Lavinia was the homeowner’s wife.
And so she became Tierney, as at home, and Mrs. Ketchum, soon to establish herself as a friend, became Lavinia. Tierney’s newfound sense of the proper, however, demanded of her that she confer on Will Ketchum the title of Mr. Ketchum, and he, though he soon called her Tierney, did not persuade her to change.
Tierney’s sleep was deep; she had come so far, and now something in her realized it was the end of the road and allowed her exhausted, anxious inner self to relax, perhaps for the first time since leaving Binkiebrae. The letter to Annie had been postponed.
Morning brought the usual breakfast preparations. Breaking fast was the same everywhere, only the food itself changed. But not much. Here, as in Scotland, there was a porridge of oatmeal. But here, as not often at home, milk was ple
ntiful, even creamy, and toast was of bread, not oatcakes. And instead of tea—coffee. Tierney gallantly downed a cup but refused a second. With more of the cream and a teaspoon of sugar, it wasn’t so bad, at that.
Her cotton dress was fairly new, having been made shortly before she left Scotland, but it was sadly wrinkled. Nevertheless Tierney took comfort in the fact that it was clean. And it was entirely suitable for the first call of duty—a chicken hunt.
Will handed her a gunny sack and tried to give her instructions. “I don’t know how to tell you to catch a chicken . . . there’s never been lessons in chicken catching, I guess. You just do what you have to do—chase them down, grab them, put them in the bag. If you have any luck and the bag gets heavy to lug, come on back and empty it in the pen.” He had already reported that at least thirty chickens were now safe in the pen, which had been closed and latched.
“And be careful,” Lavinia warned. “Keep your bearings at all times. If you lose your way, just sit down and wait. We have a bell, and if we think you’re in trouble, we’ll walk around, ringing it, listening for your holler. I’m sure, though, that you’ll have no problem.”
“Have you?” Tierney, big-eyed, asked. “Lost your way, I mean.”
“Once, just once. I was looking for Buster who was, after all, asleep in the house. But I got panicky, and I guess I’d still be out there wandering around . . . or worse, if Will hadn’t devised the bell scheme on the spot, and came clanging loudly after me. I heard, and moved toward the sound as soon as I felt confident I knew where it was coming from. The sky—” Lavinia shuddered slightly, as though recalling the barrenness of her surroundings, surrounded by grass and overhead the endlessness of a brassy sky with nothing recognizable on the skyline, “seems like a big bowl turned upside down over your head sometimes. So remember—the first minute you feel you’re in trouble—stop wandering.”
Once out of sight, following a couple of chickens that ran squawking before her into the grass at the edge of the clearing, Tierney, already hot, found her skirt a great hindrance as it caught and held in grass, thistles, and other weeds. Cautiously, well-hidden, she reached for the bottom back edge of her skirt, hiked it up between her legs, and tucked it into the belt at her waist. Clad thus in psuedo-pants, she resumed the chase, looking over her shoulder constantly to check on her position.
Perhaps the chickens played out before she did, but she found them, eventually, squatting helplessly, beaks open, and was able to snatch them up and stuff them, wings now flapping and voices raised in outrage, into the sack.
“Bird brains!” she muttered. “Dinna ken what’s good for ye!”
The game of “search and snatch” was over before noon. Before returning, Tierney loosed her skirt, let it fall into place, and found herself no more wrinkled than before.
More than half of the lost fowl had been retrieved and dumped, complaining, into the pen. Here they made their immediate way to water and food, and told the others, perhaps, that it was a heartless world out there and advised them to appreciate it when they were well off.
“We’re still missing a good half of them,” Will said, latching the door for the last time. “I have an idea many of them will survive . . . we’ll see them strolling out of the grass from time to time, looking for water. We’ll probably catch more as time goes by. But for now, we’ll call it a day.” And he went his busy way, feeding, watering, cleaning pens. In his overalls and work boots he lost a little of his impeccable persona but not his dignity.
Dinner was at the noon hour, and Lavinia had it ready for them. First, Tierney took a basin of water and retired to her room, there to scrub herself down and cool herself off, noting that already the prairie sun had touched her nose with red and that the back of her neck burned; it would have been much worse if her hair, piled neatly on top of her head to begin with, had not fallen, in her mad dashes after the fleeing hens, to give some protection.
I can see, she thought, why female settlers always seem to wear sun bonnets . . . perhaps I shall have to devise such a headpiece for the garden and all outside work, if I’m not to turn out as dark as an Indian.
She’d seen some of these pathetic creatures as she crossed the territories and had sympathy for their nomadic situation, having been deprived, as they had, of their homes and livelihood and dissatisfied with being shunted to certain designated areas. For the first time she felt a sadness regarding the great migration—white man advancing relentlessly, red man pushed inexorably back.
“We’ll take time after dinner to rest,” Lavinia declared.
“Me too? It’s . . . it’s a’ reet—all right—if you think I should keep on workin’,” Tierney offered, well aware of the hours she was supposed to “do her duty.”
“Tierney,” Lavinia said, “we’ll not stick relentlessly by the rules, if you don’t mind. We don’t expect you to work until the dot of ten, for instance, then quit. There will be days when we’ll fold up after supper; there will be days we may sit and sew together, or read, far into the night. But I assure you, we won’t run over your time.”
Tierney flushed. “I’m not feart o’ that. Na, na, I jist want to do all that I should.”
“I’ll be free to tell you, all right? I think we shall get along very well, that way. Do you see any problem?”
Tierney shook her head and counted herself blessed. Oh that Pearly could hear how satisfactorily things were turning out for her. Oh that Pearly were here to express to her God Tierney’s heartfelt gratitude. In the little Pearly had imparted before she left, she had somehow made it understood that there had to be some kind of reconciliation—was it confession of sins and acceptance of Christ as Savior?—before prayer could be meaningful and satisfactory. What was it Pearly had quoted in defense of her position? “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” But wise, wise Pearly! She had followed this dire prediction closely with the message of hope and restoration she so loved: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Impatiently, to drive all such thoughts from her mind, Tierney turned to the remainder of the day and the days following, falling into a pattern of work and rest that she found satisfying. The nights, too, fell into a pattern—drifting off to a much-needed and well-deserved sleep, but with a feeling that she needed to thank someone for the fact that, as Pearly had once maintained would be true, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places.”
Pearly nibbled the end of her pencil, staring thoughtfully out of her bedroom window. How to express to her dear friends how contented she was! And how, though they were greatly missed, to tell them that she wouldn’t change her present circumstances or associations for anything!
Difficult as it was to tell, Pearly had an idea Tierney and Anne would be happy for her, rejoicing with her in her newfound state of affairs. They might even understand that it couldn’t have been otherwise, praying about it as she had all across the ocean and the continent.
Across her line of vision a stalwart Frank moved, intent on lugging pails of water to the young trees that were and would—as the days and months and years came and went—change the landscape and the atmosphere of the Schmidt farmstead. Even to her loving eyes it was obvious that he was not the typical man of grace and elegance portrayed in books and magazines and newspapers as the ultimate in male pulchritude. Yet, to her, he was all he should be, and her heart was engaged, even though the words had not yet been spoken that would make their relationship binding.
Why hurry? Could one hasten the budding of the tree in spring, the hatching of an egg, the flowering of a rose? Only to its hurt, and the assurance that the result would be disastrous. Pearly was convinced that to everything there is a season—“a time to plant, and a time to pluck up . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh . . . a time to embrace . . . a time to love. . . .” Pearly was convinced there was a God-ordained time to every purpose under the heaven. Such a conviction fostered peace and p
atience.
By faith Pearly saw her future here on the Schmidt homestead full of satisfaction and purpose, happiness and husband, fulfillment and children.
Her attention, sincere and rapt though it was, was childish enough to be drawn to the cuff of the sleeve on the wrist of the hand holding the pencil. The thrill was only slightly less than the one she felt when Frankie looked up, saw her through the window, and waved. (These were days of thrilling discoveries for Pearly Gates Chapel.)
The dress, one of three patiently and lovingly cut, sewed, and fitted by Gussie Schmidt herself while her “helpmate”—Pearly—put the house in shining order, was far and above all, her favorite of the lot. Not only was it the first, and never to be forgotten for that reason alone, but it was daintily made, with its turned-down collar, neat ruffles around the yoke in front and back and sporting serpentine braid; its skirt was full, with a wide hem; it was lined to the waist and girdle yoked in front. The color—oh joy of joys—was a sweet blue with small roses liberally sprinkled across its generous sweeping skirt and fitted bodice.
Pearly couldn’t remember ever having had a new dress in her life. Her mum had frequented the secondhand dealers who sat in dark basements, sorting through bags of rags and castoffs, offering anything useable for sale for a few pennies. Whatever fit each child of the large family was allotted to that one and always passed on when outgrown.
Dear Teerney and Ann—Pearly watched the ruffled cuff as it moved across the paper, and almost lost her place, so entranced was she with its beauty—I am fine. How are . . . Pearly paused. Spelling by sound dictated that “you” should be spelled “u,” but she felt it was not quite right—ewe?
Pearly felt she had made a good start and was satisfied with it. Now, more laboriously, she continued, first licking the lead again in what seemed to her a businesslike manner:
The Schmidts made me welcum and I like it here very much. The work is not to hard. I have 3 new dresses, one with roses on it, one with stripes, and one with poka dots. I got yor letter Teerney and the one you sent on from Ann. Im glad she has a job. Yor job sownds good to. No I have not herd anything from my family in London. This is my family now. In Gods time Frank and I will marry. You will be at peece about this if ewe are praying for me as I hope ewe are.
