Fair Weather (4 page)

In the afternoons Lottie or I would pour the ripened cream into the churn and churn it by hand. After the butter came, we’d take it out and pour off the buttermilk. Then we’d work the butter with salt and set it in the cellar. The next day we’d bring it up, work it with more salt, and put it into molds.

But something had come over Mama today. She was making changes. And she was not a great one for change.

“Take the big pail for eggs,” she told me. “Lift every hen.” That meant she wanted extra eggs. I always gathered every one I found, but maybe some days I didn’t look as hard as I might.

The egg broker would come to you, but Mama sent butter and eggs into town with Granddad every other day or so. He sold them to the Oldweilers, who ran the store. They put them on the trains to St. Louis and Chicago for the hotels and the eating places there. City people had never tasted a fresh egg in their lives and didn’t even know it.

When I came back, dragging a bucket brimming with eggs, the kitchen was hot as hinges even this early in the day.

Lottie was at the drain board, slapping yesterday’s butter into molds. Mama banged a platter of fried cutlets into the oven to keep them hot. Then she turned to me. “Hurry on and give me some eggs,” she said, as if I wasn’t right there by her elbow. Mama was very short with us today, very abrupt in her movements. She was cracking eggs on the edge of the skillet like she was killing vermin.

As I was setting the table, Buster showed up. He sensed trouble and was willing to forgo breakfast in the circumstances. Mama spied him with the eyes in the back of her head as he was reaching for his air rifle.

She wheeled around from the skillet. “There’ll be no squirrel hunt today,” she told him. “A penny apiece for the tails! That won’t pay for the shot.”

Buster looked crestfallen.

“I want you and Rosie in the briar as quick as breakfast’s over,” Mama said. “I want every blackberry you find.”

Buster and I swapped glances. I liked roaming the timber, seeing what berries I could find. Picking
blackberries in our
briar,
though, was too much like work.

Granddad rose out of the floor with two buckets of cream to ripen. “How does that cream smell?” Mama demanded to know.

Again Granddad looked injured. One time the cows had walked through the fence and got into the mushmelon patch. They ate their fill, and for days afterward the cream smelled like mushmelons. We had to slop it to the hogs. But it only happened once.

“It smells like cream,” Granddad growled. “Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” He meant Mama, though he was never a ray of sunshine himself before breakfast.

When Dad came in, he’d already done a day’s work and was wet through. As we lit into our meal, I saw him glance up the table to see if the train tickets were there. I caught his eye and shook my head, and got away with it.

We finished off in the usual way, with pie—sour cream apple. At the time I supposed everybody in the nation topped off their breakfasts with a big slab of pie. I wondered if we were going to bake today, since we’d be awash in eggs and blackberries.

We were all poised for flight when Mama said in a high, hollow voice, “Papa, I want you to take us to town today.”

We all blinked, and Granddad stared. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles down his nose and looked over them, not through them. He was not a great reader.

“Take who?” he said.

“These children,” Mama said, “. . . and me.”

“Can’t be did.” He clamped his jaw. “You’d be too big a bunch for the buggy. And I won’t leave Tip behind, or he’ll pine and get off his feed.”

Fat chance of Tip missing a meal is what Mama was thinking. But she said, “There’ll be room for us all and Tip too, and the butter and eggs.” She glanced at Buster and me. “And the blackberries.”

“You tell me how,” Granddad muttered.

“Hitch Lillian up to the wagon.”

Wherever we went, we hitched one or both of Dad’s draft horses to the Studebaker wagon. They were a pair of big chestnut Belgians with white manes. For some reason they were called Fancy Pants and Comet. Of course we couldn’t use them today. They’d be with Dad in the field.

“Nosir!” Granddad’s fist hit the table. “Draggin’ that monstrous big wagon with you and them overgrown kids would put a strain on her. She’d keel over. I won’t have it!”

“We won’t need to hurry,” Mama replied, very calm now. “You run Lillian too hard, Papa. You break her into a gallop on the straightaway. We won’t do that today.”

Granddad’s breath was coming fast. “I don’t go to town this early,” he said. “The post office don’t open till—”

“We’ll go at your usual time,” said Mama, cool and firm.

“I ain’t stayin’ all day,” Granddad declared. “I ain’t got the time for that.”

“Neither do we,” said Mama. They argued on, and Mama won.

Picking up and going off to town on the spur of the moment was as big a bolt from the beyond as Aunt Euterpe’s letter. We went to a country school and a country church. About the only things farmers went to town for in those days were salt, sugar, flour, and baking powder. And we had Granddad.

Being young, we kids liked going to town, but Mama didn’t care about it. She was shy among strangers. I didn’t know what to think. And before I knew it, I was out in the briar with Buster, fighting the stickers to get to the blackberries.

We went to town that day. But it was a rush and a struggle to get ready. I had to scrub the chicken manure off the eggs before I could pack them in straw, never my favorite chore. Lottie got the cleaner task of scalding the milk pans and setting them outside. Buster had to box up the berries and winnow out all the leaves and twigs, which he didn’t like doing.

Out in the lot the air was blue around Granddad as he backed Lillian Russell into the wagon shafts. She kept looking around at him like he’d lost his mind. I gave the cream a quick stir, and we were off down the road to town, our minds swept clean by the novelty of it all.

I picture us yet, rolling along on the crown of the road with all the world we knew fanned out around us. Tip sat on the seat beside Granddad. Mama and Lottie and I
rode standing up in the wagon bed, holding on to the sides and each other. We had on fresh aprons to say we were going to town. Mama’s had pockets in it. She didn’t carry a reticule or a pocketbook. I don’t think she owned one. We all wore sunbonnets, the starchy ones we wore away from home, with the strings ironed. We all had on our shoes, except Buster. He rode with his bare feet dangling off the tailgate and his head in the clouds.

Oh, that glorious morning, and we away from our work. When we came to the level Bulldog Crossing with a shanty for a depot, the telegraph wire hummed over us. It was sending its messages we knew not where.

The farms of our neighbors nestled in walnut groves like islands in a sea of grain. The men were in the fields, cutting wheat and oats and barley. They’d wave as we passed, and Mama would nod. Granddad stared straight ahead, mortified on Lillian’s behalf. Beside him Tip grinned at the universe. Tip didn’t mind how he got there, as long as he got to go.

The men looked up when we passed the Shattuck place, where Everett worked as a hand. Whether he was one who waved, I couldn’t see. Whether Lottie took particular notice, I couldn’t tell. You could hide much in the depths of a sunbonnet.

As we came up on the town, the houses stood one after another, which made Mama feel crowded. When we stopped in front of the grocery store, Granddad wouldn’t tie the horse where there was no shade. Besides, his
regular business was elsewhere. He waited with folded arms on the seat while we unloaded the wagon. As Mama climbed down, he looked back narrow-eyed at her. “Anything you want took to the post office?”

Mama walked along the wagon to him. Without a word she pulled an envelope from her apron and handed it up to him. Then she sailed past the hitching rail and into the store.

Oh, the dim mysteries of Oldweilers’ store—the coal oil lamps burning through the day, the mingled salt and sawdust scent, and sometimes in a keg, oysters I couldn’t imagine swallowing.

Buster tacked toward the penny candy jar. Mama gathered her courage to do business with Mr. Oldweiler. He looked relieved to be dealing with her and not Granddad. That may have left him unprepared. Mama wanted three cents more the dozen on eggs. And she had him over a barrel with the butter. Nobody had better butter than ours.

Lottie and I traded looks behind Mama’s back. What was she braving town to raise extra money for? said Lottie’s expression.

Mine replied: For Chicago. I told you we were going. But Lottie shook her head, sure that Mama had just now sent the tickets back.

Mr. Oldweiler mopped his forehead with a blue bandanna. In doing business Mama was very ladylike, and that made her harder to deal with.

“Blackberries, Mrs. Beckett?” he said. We hadn’t sold him blackberries before. He reached for one and ate it, which was a point in our favor.

“The Almanac calls this a bad year for berries.” Mama gazed sadly down at ours like they were the last.

Lottie popped her eyes at me. Mama didn’t believe a word in the Farmer’s Almanac. She said it was folklore.

When it was time to settle up, I’d never seen so much money change hands. “You can take out for a stick of candy,” Mama said. Then Mr. Oldweiler gave us three for a penny. One for Buster and two for Lottie and me, just to see us blush.

Outside, Lottie found her voice first. “Well, Mama, you drive a hard bargain.”

“It’s not in my nature, though,” Mama said quietly. “I’d sooner be home.”

I thought we were headed there now. Mama would want to get this much money straight into her mattress. We began to stroll instead, our heels ringing on the wooden walk. Buster lagged behind.

We went by the hardware and turned our bonnets to the street past the barber shop. Mama surprised us by swerving into the dry goods. It was the biggest store in town and a different world from Oldweilers’, though as dim and mysterious. Thin, high-collared women you never saw anywhere else worked in there. One sat in a cage at the back to take your money.

A dress dummy stopped us dead just inside. It wore a
stiff straw hat like one of Granddad’s, with a grosgrain band. Its white shirtwaist was starchy and laid in flat pleats. Its belt buckle was two hands clasping. The gabardine skirt, a pale cream, just cleared the floor. The toes of the shoes came to perfect points, and they were snow white.

Lottie’s shoes were black. Mine that had been hers were brown. We stood there in awe. I was still in short skirts, showing a length of leg between my high-top shoe and my skirt tails.

One of the women who worked there came forward. She wore a pencil in her bun, a tape measure around her neck, a pincushion on her wrist. She observed our sunbonnets.

“Is that what they’re wearing now?” Mama said in a low voice, as if to spare the dress dummy’s feelings.

The salesclerk nodded, looking away, though we were the only people in the place.

“That hat.” Mama nodded at the dummy’s head. “It’s very mannish, isn’t it?”

Mama didn’t wear hats, but the one she was wearing in her mind right now had flowers on it. Lilacs, I expect, her favorite.

“Simplicity is the keynote this season,” the saleswoman said.

“Then I take it that’s why there’s no machine lace on the collar of that shirtwaist.”

The woman nodded. “Did you want to look through the pattern book?”

You bought very little ready-made in those days. You bought the yardage and you cut it out from a pattern at home. In your button box you already had plenty of buttons. I liked looking through the pattern book, though the outfits were always for occasions that never arose.

“The pattern book?” Mama said. “Indeed not. We haven’t time to make anything up. Would an outfit like that do for the fair?” She was bolder about the dress dummy now, pointing right at it.

“The state fair?” the saleslady said, because our sunbonnets would do for that. “In Springfield?”

“Certainly not,” said Mama, grander than I’d ever heard her be. “The Columbian Exposition at Chicago.”

The wind went out of me. But now we knew, or thought we did. I’d been right: We were going to the fair. The letter Mama had handed to Granddad told Aunt Euterpe we were coming. The saleslady turned for a larger size in everything for Lottie, a smaller size for me.

My first thought was a big one. I’d be in long skirts at last. My skirt for the fair would brush my shoe tops, and there’d be no going back from that. I supposed there was wear left in the shoes we already had. But I saw Mama eye the dummy’s polished pair, white for summertime. My heart jumped over the moon.

Now Mama turned back for Buster. He hung just inside the store, suspicious. The place was a quagmire of yardage on bolts, quilting frames, and a notions counter spiky with crochet hooks. Worse, corsets were laid out
where you could see them. Buster shied from it all.

Mama summoned him. Another saleslady was called for. Come to find out, Buster needed knickerbocker britches, an Eton jacket, and a wide collar to his shirt, with a flowing, artistic black sateen cravat, and a sailor hat. And long black ribbed socks to go with new high-top shoes. His feet had grown a size since he’d last had shoes on.

Buster sagged.

*  *  *

Later, much later, we staggered outside, loaded like pack mules with paper parcels tied in twine. It was more Christmas than we’d ever had—in July. We were too stunned to gibber, and Buster was speechless with rage. Mama had spent all she’d gotten off Mr. Oldweiler and more she’d brought from home.

To our everlasting shame we hadn’t given her a thought. “Mama,” I said, “you didn’t get anything for yourself.”

“I’ve got plenty laid back I never get to wear,” she said, looking away.

“Well, Mama,” Lottie said, “you don’t have white shoes.”

“Yours won’t be white long,” Mama replied. “They say the Chicago streets are filthy as a hog wallow.”

She turned us down the boardwalk. There we came upon Granddad staring in the window of the pharmacy.

We expected to be complained of for taking up so much of his valuable time. But he was drinking in a big poster showing a fine-looking man in a western hat.