The Misadventures of Maude March (2 page)

Likelier, those stupid cowboys had run out of bullets, or
killed each other. Maybe one of them shot out the mirror again, the way one of them did every so often, and had stopped to think about seven years of bad luck.

“I need help here,” I shouted into the mercantile, where everybody now lay on the floor, but not because they were hurt. They were hiding. “Aunt Ruthie's been shot and Maude has fainted dead away.”

I tell you all this to make you understand that Maude was an upright young woman who never made mock of the truth or questioned the dark ways of justice until she saw how truth could be mangled to make a shape unrecognizable.

To have you know her for a rightly raised person who never complained about the awful twists of fate that made her life less comfortable than it might have been.

To show you how impossible it was for her to do the things everyone claimed that she did. For this is the true story of how my sister, Maude March, came to be known far and wide as a horse thief, a bank robber, and a cold-blooded killer.

A
UNT RUTHIE DIED THERE ON THE BOARDWALK IN FRONT
of the mercantile, and our lives changed overnight. We went out in the morning to choose a box at the undertaker's and came back to find a man from the bank locking our doors.

But I'm getting ahead of my story.

The sheriff came running at the sound of gunshots, and the shooter was arrested. We saw this happening, but again, it hardly seemed real. Maude cried over Aunt Ruthie in a ladylike way that Aunt Ruthie would have approved of.

I cried because Maude cried, that was how I felt right then. The terrible truth was, I was not so sad as surprised. Deeply surprised. Somehow hopeful that the school bell would ring and Aunt Ruthie would stand and say, “That's all the time we have. Put your pencils down.”

Reverend Peasley and the undertaker arrived together. The blessing in this was that Maude and I had only to let them take things in hand. The reverend installed us in his buggy. It was a tight fit, being a one-seater, but we lived only a few streets away.

Although it was a very short ride, we were twice nearly
overcome by a terrible odor. The first time, I thought Reverend Peasley must be the guilty party. I kept this notion to myself. The second time, I understood it to be his buggy pony.

Only the sudden gust of a breeze saved me from gagging. “A bit windy all of a sudden,” I said.

“Thank the Lord,” Reverend Peasley replied.

He took us to the home of an elderly neighbor lady. When she came to the door, Reverend Peasley told her Aunt Ruthie had passed over.

“Oh, poor thing,” Mrs. Golightly said. She had to look up at him, as she wasn't any taller than myself. “Did she go quietly?”

We heard all this, the buggy having been drawn up near the door. Maybe Reverend Peasley thought he would only upset us further, because he didn't answer that question. Instead, he asked her if we could stay the night with her, if she would comfort us in the womanly way. That's what he said to her. What was the poor woman to say to him but yes?

I had not expected this, nor had Maude, I could see that. It came home to me in that moment that we were all we had, Maude and me. This time there was no Aunt Ruthie to take us in hand. This time we were orphans once and for all.

He left us there.

Mrs. Golightly did her best. She offered us cookies and cold buttermilk, but we weren't hungry. She suggested a lie-down, but we said, no, thank you. We sat in her parlor for several minutes, all of us silent, until Maude said, “I want to go home.”

“And so you shall,” Mrs. Golightly said so kindly that we cried some more. The feeling of surprise had left me, but still
I didn't feel my tears were for Aunt Ruthie so much as they were for Maude and me. What were we to do now?

Aunt Ruthie was gone so quickly she hadn't even had time to wonder what happened. The reverend told us she'd gone to a place where no one had need to be scared. I was glad for Aunt Ruthie; I was only sorry that Maude and me had to face this worry without her stern face to guide us.

By the time Mrs. Golightly got around to putting her night things into her knitting bag, some weather had blown in. We had to walk arm in arm with Mrs. Golightly or we might have lost her to the breeze. Not only was she no taller than me, she was strangely lighter, as if her bones had no weight to them at all.

Maude's hair and mine whipped and snapped around our heads, and by the time we got to our house, Mrs. Golightly's hair was doing the same dance. The wind had stolen her every hairpin. We took turns brushing out each other's hair, which got us past the first rush of sadness over coming home without Aunt Ruthie.

Mrs. Golightly made us some hot cocoa to drink. I was none too enthusiastic about this till I realized she'd made it some sweeter than Aunt Ruthie would have. Mrs. Golightly had a free hand with sugar. I had already known that about her, but I appreciated the fact all anew.

She even lit an extra lamp to make us feel more cheerful.

Mrs. Golightly was as kindly as could be, but she was something less than a comfort. Twice during the evening, she asked where it was that Aunt Ruthie had gone. Each time, we told her Aunt Ruthie had passed. Each time, she said, “Poor thing. She went quietly, did she?”

In the morning, Mrs. Golightly went with us to the undertaker's to choose a box for Aunt Ruthie. In this matter, she was very helpful. Even though she seemed to think the box would be for her sister. We didn't know anything about a sister. Maude simply passed Mrs. Golightly a hankie.

“I've been thinking about her stone,” Maude said as we stood by the bench in front of the barbershop. The bench had a message carved in the back, REST YOUR WEARY BONES, but something had chopped the center out of the
o
in
bones
. “We ought to say something pretty. She deserves that.”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked, although Aunt Ruthie had never cared for things pretty. She liked practical. To her, that was as pretty as things got.

On her stone, we said, HERE LIES RUTH ANN WATERS, GONE TO GOLDEN SHORES. July 23, 1840–August 9, 1869. Over this, Mrs. Golightly needed another hankie.

Aunt Ruthie might have thought it was wasteful to pay for any letters other than her name and dates. But then Maude said the words made her picture Aunt Ruthie as a boat with billowy white sails. That was better than picturing her dead on the boardwalk, and I thought even Aunt Ruthie could see the sense in that.

We went back to Mrs. Golightly's and made sure she knew it was not her sister, but Aunt Ruthie, who had passed. When we left her, we saw that a buggy had drawn up at our house. A man was nailing something to the door. We hurried over there to read the large print at the top: “First Bank of Cedar Rapids.” And in red, the word “Foreclosed.”

“What are you doing?” Maude asked him. “We live here.”

“Your aunt was behind on the payments for this property,” the man said, without so much as a glance in Maude's direction. “We need to sell it off to make our money back.”

“Aunt Ruthie paid the bank only last week,” Maude said.

“That payment covered last year's last payment,” the man said, now on his way back to his buggy, with us on his heels. “That still leaves you nearly nine months in arrears.” He gave us a doubtful look. “That means you still owe me money.”

“I know what it means,” Maude said angrily. “I'll make the payments.”

The man said, “Where are you going to get the money?”

“I don't know just yet,” Maude told him. “But I'll manage.”

“Your aunt said the same thing, that she'd manage. And she wasn't any green girl. She knew how to work.”

This appeared to strike Maude to the quick. “I know how to work,” she said in a nearly breathless voice.

I understood how Maude felt. I was five when Momma and Daddy died, and Maude was nine. We didn't have anyone but Aunt Ruthie, and we didn't know any better than her. But that was the end of childhood as we knew it.

Aunt Ruthie worked hard, and she made us work right alongside her. Despite being a teacher, she didn't seem to know such a thing as a child existed. Just some people were shorter and more able to clean the floor under the table than others.

If someone was to have asked us, well, girls, do you want to work like oxen, give up playing with dolls, and wear brown dresses for the rest of your days, we'd have said, no sir, send us
to the orphanage, where at least they'll let us keep our dolls. The sad fact was, Aunt Ruthie thought playing with dolls was foolishness.

She often said to mothers, “Those girls will have real babies soon enough. Let them learn to run fast. Let them learn to climb trees. Let them learn to shoot rabbits.” I suppose she would have said, prepare them to work themselves to the bone, if she thought anyone would heed her.

To give the devil her due, Aunt Ruthie was a right fine cook, and she never worked us any harder than she worked herself. She was a stern woman, but she was never a cruel one. I never learned what shaped her that way; she wasn't much for talk once she'd told us what she wanted done.

She taught school the same way. She did not become a friend to her students. They did not love her, although they showed her all the respect she could have hoped for. She arrived with one small suitcase she called her “necessary,” and she left this world with even less.

It didn't seem right to hand over all she'd worked for without a fight. “You can't take our house away,” I said to the man from the bank.

“It isn't your house till it's paid for,” he said, “and you can't pay for it.”

“Just give us a chance to bury our aunt,” Maude cried, clinging to his coat as he climbed into his buggy. “We'll find a way to pay the bank every penny it's owed.”

I pulled her back just in time, for the buggy jolted as the man loosened the horse's reins. It would have knocked her flat.

“I'm sorry, miss,” the man said, “but the bank can't wait any longer.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” Maude wailed.

“See your minister,” the man said, looking ashamed of himself. Then he whipped up his horse and raced away.

I checked the front door. Padlocked, of course.

I walked around to the back and found that door had not been padlocked, but we had locked it ourselves the night before.

“What are you up to, Sallie?” Maude asked me, her face gone pale. She didn't look much more lively than Aunt Ruthie had that morning at the funeral parlor.

“I'm going in,” I said.

“You heard the man,” Maude said weakly. “It isn't our house anymore.”

“Our stuff is in there.” The pantry window had a crack in it, but we hadn't yet replaced the pane.

“Oh, Sallie, don't do that,” Maude cried as I picked up a rock.

“I am not leaving my dime novels and my one dress with some color in it and my good boots behind.”

Most of the glass fell when the rock hit, but I pounded another rock all around the frame to get rid of the last jagged edges. If we got so much as a scratch climbing through, I knew I would never hear the end of it.

T
HE FAMILIAR SIGHT OF AUNT RUTHIE'S POLISHED-TO-A-
gloss canning jars cheered me some.

They were brim-filled with sweet corn, pickled beets, bright green snap beans, damson plum jam and prune butter, and strawberry sauce for pancakes.

Not that my mind was on the food stores. I went straight to my room and tied my dimers into a thick packet with Aunt Ruthie's saved-up string. I put my clothes into a carpetbag. Three dresses still hung in the wardrobe when I finished, all of them made for Maude by our mother's own hands, and long since outgrown by both of us. I still kept them, not because they held memories but because my eyes could never be tired of the blue gingham, the rose-figured cotton, the green calico.

I found myself staring hungrily at them, reluctant to leave them behind. But there was no room for them in my bag. I went into Aunt Ruthie's room, once our mother's room, and found the sewing scissors. I went back to the dresses and cut big patches out of the skirts, folded those, and stuffed them into my bag.

Maude looked in as I shut the wardrobe. “I heard you in Aunt Ruthie's room. Saying your good-byes?”