The Egg and I (23 page)

Verna Marie Jefferson, the moonshiner's wife, sent me up hundreds of
True Story
,
True Confession
,
True Love
,
Dream World
, etc., which she bought for the pictures since she couldn't read. I read them all and was fascinated and ashamed. Here I was complaining and I didn't know what a problem was. Was Bob a thief? Was Bob a murderer? Did my Mother drink? Did my sisters smoke doped cigarettes? Then what was I complaining about?

To supplement my reading I wrote letters. I wrote long letters to everyone I knew and wondered, while I was doing it, why I, who had nothing to say, was able to fill four and five pages while William Lyon Phelps never wrote more than a few meaty lines. Among the letters I received were monthly ones from Deargrandmother addressed Dear Child Bride, which I found intensely annoying, because it brought to mind pictures of a ten-year-old girl in pigtails and bare feet being dragged to the altar by a great hairy brute. I wrote to Mother and demanded that she make Deargrandmother stop addressing me in this depressing way, but Mother characteristically replied, "Why stop her? She enjoys it and it doesn't hurt you." In fact, even mentioning the child bride business to my family was a mistake, for from that time on all of their letters were addressed—and sometimes on the outside of the envelope—Child Bride.

One time Bob went away on business and left me on the ranch alone over night—at least he thought he had. It was summer and sultry. I did the chores while great black clouds surged angrily around the mountaintops and the sky became dark and swollen. Coming back from my last trip to the chicken house and with only the ducks and the pig left to feed, I was surprised to find Elwin Kettle in the yard in one of his old cars with a top. He said, "Maw says there is going to be a storm and she wants you to stay all night at our house. It's O.K. about the chickens. I'll drive you up first thing in the morning. She said to bring the baby's bottle and come on."

I was very touched by her thoughtfulness, but a little apprehensive about sleeping arrangements. I need not have been. Mrs. Kettle took me upstairs to the "spare" room which was immaculate, had a large brass bed with one of the beautiful finished quilts on it for a counterpane; a very pretty braided oval rug on the floor; clean ruffled curtains at the windows; and a large bureau with an embroidered bureau scarf, an oblong pincushion with an embroidered cover on it, a mother-of-pearl dresser set complete with a hair receiver and picture frame (a very deluxe catalogue item) and a vase of large red crepe paper roses. It was very cozy there with the dark clouds outside the window bumping into each other and grumbling menacingly and the wind whining in the tree tops. Mrs. Kettle showed me the closet full of quilts, and the baby shoes and hair of each of the children, the bureau drawers packed with Christmas presents all in their original boxes and never used and consisting mostly of nightgowns with heavy tatted yokes, towel and washrag sets, guest towels and crocheted doilies. By the time we had finished examining everything the storm had broken and the thunder roared and the lightning flashed and the rain hammered relentlessly on the roof over our heads. Mrs. Kettle had to leave me to get out the leak pans since the roof had begun to leak some ten years before. Paw hadn't gotten around to fixing it and each year the winds tore off more shingles and the leaks increased until it had reached a state where she kept a great stack of cans and pans in the upper hall. At the first drop of rain she distributed them over the upstairs. Anne and I were assigned two empty coffee cans—one at the foot of the bed and one in the closet. As I undressed the baby and got her ready for bed, the pink! pink! of the leaks dripping into the cans played a little tune.

After I had given Anne her bottle and settled her for the night, I joined the Kettles in the kitchen. The chores were done and they were all gathered around the kitchen table, reading the local papers and talking about the dance to which the older boys were going and which was seventy miles away. The only car that was running had no lights, and Elwin in tended to drive it over the mountain roads by sense of smell, evidently. Maw protested mildly. She said, "Elwin you've turned over three cars on that road and two of 'em are at the bottom of the gulch. You was just lucky you turned over where you did—you go runnin' off the road up by the old logging works and you won't come limpin' home with only a busted arm." Elwin said, "Ah, I know that road like a book." Ma said, "Well, what page was you on when you run off the road the last three times?" Elwin said, "Well, once I had a blow-out, and once the axle broke and the other time I skidded."

Paw said, "Jutht remember, thon, you pay for your own funral."

Elwin said sulkily, "Well, what am I supposed to do, climb out of my coffin and go to work until I git enough for the funral?"

Everyone laughed and Paw said, "It ain't no laughin' matter. How about thome thupper, Maw?"

So Maw and I brought to the table great bowls of plain boiled navy beans, boiled macaroni and fried potatoes. Already on the table were pickles, bread, canned peaches and rock cookies. We all had cups of coffee, which was strong, but not venomous, since a fresh pot had been made just after I arrived.

After supper Maw and I "redd" up the dishes, but we couldn't wash them right away for the older boys had to wash (very lightly) and comb their hair at the sink in preparation for the dance. When they had finally left with admonitions to be home before milking time and to drive slowly (wasted breath), Maw and I washed the dishes while Paw and the three little boys took a bicycle apart in one corner of the kitchen. The area back of the stove and around the woodbox showed no evidences of the brooding it had done earlier in the year, but there was a very heady odor in that vicinity because of the wet barn clothes of Paw, the work clothes of the boys steaming behind the stove and the many pairs of work shoes drying on the oven door. Heady odor or not, the Kettles' kitchen had a warm human feeling in comparison with my own clean lonely kitchen further up the mountain. The Kettles, owing no doubt to their struggle for existence, had developed strong family ties; and they had generously, for this stormy evening, allowed me to become one of them. It was "Us Kettles against the world."

Maw and I sewed on her quilt and occasionally put wood in the stove and sneered at everyone who had more worldly goods than the Kettles. "Seventy-two poles Charlie Johnson had to buy to bring 'lectricity in to their ranch and he had to help set 'em too. But did that satisfy Nettie? No. She had to have a 'lectric stove, a worshing machine, a 'lectric iron, a vacuum cleaner. Jeeeeeeesus Keeeeeeerist, I says to her, you'd think you was a invalid. I've worshed for fifteen kids and done it all on a board and with a hand wringer and I ain't in a hospital yet, I says to her."

"I wath up there yethtiddy," Paw said, as he stirred some vile-smelling tire-mending concoction on the stove, "and Charlie wath butchering and I athk him for the thpare ribth becauth they kilt two pigth and I knowed that the two of them couldn't eat all them thpare ribth, but that thtingy thkunk thaid, 'The reathon I'M BUTCHERING, MR. KETTLE, is becauthe I need the meat,' and I wath tho mad I forgot the egg math I had borried."

Maw said, "Well, I would have told him to take them spare ribs and stuff 'em."

I said, "What else could they do with all of those spare ribs?"

Maw said, "Oh, I suppose they give them to some of Nettie's relations. She's related to every sonofabitch in the country."

I said, "Well, anyway when we butcher Gertrude and Elmer, our pigs, I'll give you all of the spare ribs you can eat."

Maw said, "You and Bob are real good neighbors, Betty, but honest to Gawd some of these bastards don't seem to know what the word neighbor means. Pull that coffee pot to the front of the stove, Paw."

About nine-thirty we all retired. I had on my outing flannel pajamas and was just about to blow out my candle when Maw called to me to come to their bedroom across the hall. I took my candle and tiptoed out into the hall, which ran the full length of the house and from which opened eight doors, not counting my room or Mrs. Kettle's. I was a little hesitant about going in, but Maw was standing by the window in a voluminous outing flannel gown, beckoning to me. "Put your candle on the dresser and come here," she said in a vibrant whisper. She had the window opened wide and the wet night air carried the sweet smells of wet earth and evening scented stock, which grew in a great clump below Mrs. Kettle's window. She said, "Look there, down by the south gate, the lightning struck the old maple."

I looked and made out the outline of half of the maple lying across the road. The other half hung torn and bleeding against the pale summer evening sky. The rain had stopped while we were at supper and all that remained of the storm were the dying tree and the splat, splat, splat of the dripping eaves. Maw stared morbidly at the fallen tree for a few minutes more; then, carefully closing and locking the window, took her candle from the dresser and put it on a chair beside the bed. From the bed came the rhythmic beat of heavy breathing and occasional gulp, gulp, snort of a broken snore. Paw had evidently fallen asleep as soon as he touched the pillow and he must have been very tired for I noted that he wore a felt hat pulled down well over his ears, and the usual layers of dirty underwear and dirty sweaters. Maw sat heavily down on her side of the bed, causing Paw to spring up and slant alarmingly but not to waken. She said, "Paw always wears a hat in bed. He says his head gets cold." I realized suddenly that I had been staring in rude fascination at Paw whose mustache twittered on the ends with each gulp and snort, while his eyebrows drew together menacingly with each indrawn breath. I hastily picked up my candle and left.

As I eased in beside small Anne and laid my cheek on one of Mrs. Kettle's best pillow slips, I knew that I would awaken with a basket of flowers imprinted on my right cheek. "The French knots hurt the worst," I thought drowsily as I snuggled deeper and wondered if Paw had taken off his hip boots.

With Bow and Arrow

T
he Pacific Coast Indians whom I saw were as unlike the pictures on the Great Northern Railroad calendars as slugs are unlike dragonflies. True, most of the Indians I knew were breeds, but the few full-bloods I saw certainly did not lift me to any pinnacle of artistic ecstasy. The coast Indian is squat, bowlegged, swarthy, flat-faced, broad-nosed, dirty, diseased, ignorant and tricky. There were few exceptions among the many we knew.

Among the exceptions were the Swensen brothers, Clamface, Crowbar and Geoduck. They were Bob's good friends. I couldn't count them as mine, for they had no use for women and were unable to understand Bob's attitude toward me. Bob was such a fine hunter, such a crack shot, so lean and strong and manly; yet when I, merely his wife, asked him for some wood, instead of sneering, "Aw, shut up, old lady," or letting me have a well-deserved left to the chin, he docilely obliged. They were openly disgusted with Bob much of the time. They knocked their wives down for exercise and would no more have considered performing such unmanly tasks as chopping wood or carrying water than they would have entertained the idea of helping with the washing. They brought Bob venison, hundreds of pounds of it, clams, crabs, oysters, pheasant, quail, salmon and whiskey. They sometimes brought Bob unexplained hindquarters of lamb or veal and that second summer they appeared one evening at dinner with an apple box full of smoked salmon bellies. They stamped into the kitchen and plunked the box down in the middle of the floor; then Geoduck with filthy hands lifted out one of the smoked salmon and carefully cut off a strip for Bob to try.

There were times when I had been irritated by their treating me with less consideration than they did Bob, but this was not one of them. I had read of Indians preferring rotten salmon and, although I was reasonably sure that Clamface, Geoduck and Crowbar were more civilized than that, still the dirt on the hand that was fondling the salmon was of at least a week's vintage and God alone knew who had handled the fish during the catching, cleaning and smoking. I grinned hatefully at Bob, as with distended nostrils and curled lips he put the salmon in his mouth. With the first chew, however, the distaste left his face. Of his own volition he went over and cut himself another strip and then cut one for me and insisted that I eat it right then. If that salmon had originally been rotten, then all I can say is that all of us Indians prefer rotten salmon. It was delicious, but I realized with sinking heart that smoking salmon bellies would be added to my canning duties, and in order to learn I would probably have to spend at least a couple of days in Clamface's or his brothers' wigwams, or wherever they lived.

We met the Swensen brothers about a week or so after we moved to the ranch, and as I watched Bob's friendship with them and with other Indians grow, I realized why it is so much easier for a man to adjust himself to new surroundings and people than for a woman. Men are so much less demanding in friendship. A woman wants her friends to be perfect. She sets a pattern, usually a reasonable facsimile of herself, lays a friend out on this pattern and worries and prods at any little qualities which do not coincide with her own image. She simply won't be bothered with anything less than ninety per cent congruity, and will accept the ninety per cent only if the other ten per cent is shaping up nicely and promises accurate conformity within a short time. Friends with glaring lumps or unsmoothable rough places are cast off like ill-fitting garments, and even if this means that the woman has no friends at all, she seems happier than with some imperfect being for whom she would have to make allowances.

A man has a friend, period. He acquires this particular friend because they both like to hunt ducks. The fact that the friend discourses entirely in four letter words, very seldom washes, chews tobacco and spits at random, is drunk a good deal of the time and hates women, in no way affects the friendship. If the man notices these flaws in the perfection of his friend, he notices them casually as he does his friend's height, the color of his eyes, the width of his shoulders; and the friendship continues at an even temperature for years and years and years.