Janette Oke (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

Games

On warm summer evenings, Amy had difficulty getting her brood off to bed. The sun clung stubbornly in the northern sky until past ten o'clock, and in spite of the droves of mosquitoes, the children begged to be allowed to play outdoors “just a few more minutes.”

They enjoyed the usual games like Tag, Kick the Can, or Hide-and-Seek, and sometimes they played Gray Wolf, which sent shivers up the spine of anyone young enough to still be easily frightened. Whenever Janette was allowed to choose, she selected Run Sheep Run.

Another sport they liked was baseball, and there were enough family members to have a good game. At times, even Fred, on his way to slop the pigs or separate the fresh milk, would stop long enough to take his turn at bat or coach someone on how to hold his hands for successful catching. Without mitts or gloves, it was difficult to convince young players to reach a bare hand out to a flying ball.

Some rules were adjusted to better serve the family game. For instance, any ball hit over the fence was “out.” This kept those who could hit the ball hard from doing so and evened out the chances of younger ones getting on base.

When spring arrived, the schoolyard would become a playing field for every game imaginable. There were no age distinctions at the small school—it took every one of the children to make a decent game. Teams were chosen for softball, and the bigger kids took the hands of those needing help to swing the bat. If the pair actually managed to hit the ball they both would run, the older one practically dragging the youngster to first base.

If the game were to be Pump-Pump-Pull-Away, young arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets being towed to safety. And if the choice were Anti-I-Over, larger hands guided small ones as they struggled to catch the ball.

With so many children needed for each activity, there was no time for major discord in the schoolyard. On rare occasions there might be a disagreement of some sort, but to allow real spats would have spoiled the game for everyone.

However, there were times when Janette observed the cruelty possible in children. A group of young fellows attending a nearby school turned somewhat into a neighborhood “gang,” and they chose Bobby, a handicapped boy who lived in the community, as their target. At community picnics or ball games the local bullies teased him unmercifully until he would lose his temper and chase them on his crutches. Although he hobbled after them as quickly as he could, they would soon be out of his reach and then he would lunge and hurl a crutch in their direction. Of course without his crutch he fell down, which made the boys howl with laughter. Janette was horror-stricken over the display of cruelty and wondered why someone didn't put a stop to it.

Bobby did have some good times. One thing he seemed to enjoy more than anything else was Beauty, and the chance to ride the little pony always made him grin with pleasure. Fred would help him up onto Beauty's back. Once on, Bobby's twisted legs made it difficult to straddle her well, but he clutched a clump of mane tightly in his hands as he set out for a ride.

Sometimes he did fall off, but Beauty was a small horse and the young boy was never hurt. Then he would coax to be boosted back up again, calling, “Mr. Steeves, Mr. Steeves. The old bronc rider isn't dead yet!” and his grin would spread from ear to ear. Beauty was good for Bobby, and somehow the small pony seemed to know it.

Other schoolmates occasionally came to play at the Steeves' farm. The closest neighbor lived about a mile away, so it was particularly exciting to share play time with children other than siblings.

Perry and Grace Rhine lived almost two miles away and had a family of eight whose ages roughly corresponded with the ages of the Steeves children, though the sexes did not. The oldest was Perry Jr., always referred to as Junior, then Dale, Fern, Faye, and Leonard, called Sonny. After them were Lylas, Harvey, and Alta.

Over the years there developed a great deal of teasing over one Rhine-Steeves match-up or another. Betty was linked with Junior, perhaps with some justification. After all, he had once given Janette a dime to “get lost.” And he did seem to hang around a good deal of the time.

Jean was teased about Dale. If there was any basis to this, it was hidden much better. Janette was teased about Sonny, and little Joyce, who was still very young, was tormented about Harvey.

Poor little Harvey. He had done absolutely nothing to deserve the teasing and laughter, but on more than one occasion little Joyce declared vehemently, “I love everybody in this world—'cept Harvey and Hitler and the Devil!”

The Rhines had a number of horses, and many adventures developed around them in one way or another. There were bucking horses and shying horses, running horses and horses who threw their riders.

One day Janette was finished playing at the Rhine farm and was ready to start home. Dale, a teenager, volunteered to give her a ride home on horseback. He caught the horse, pulled Janette up to her place behind him, then they started off.

There was one spot on the Rhine road crossed by a little creek bed. Whenever it was filled enough to be flowing, that part of the road could be under water, and after the worst rains it became a marshy bog. Only during dry weather could wagons pass that way at all. Even saddle horses hated the spot. Rows of loose logs had been laid across the swampy spot in corduroy fashion, but horses often balked and fussed, refusing to cross the makeshift bridge of uneven, shifting poles.

It was unclear just what spooked the horse on that particular day, but at just that muddy spot she suddenly plunged off the road, across the ditch, and deposited both of her riders on a rough pile of logs left there for future use in the crossing. She then lit out for home.

Dale, a big fifteen-year-old, bulging with farm-earned muscles, blazed with anger at the jittery horse. He took off after her, lifting lengths of logs from the ground and hurling them at the fleeing animal. None of his missiles connected, but throwing them seemed to release some of Dale's anger.

“C'mon,” he called to Janette, and the two muddy riders trudged off after the animal.

It was not until they reached the Rhine barnyard that they caught the runaway and mounted again. Determination clenching his jaw, Dale advised Janette to hang on by locking her small hands together around his waist.

This time they made it safely to the Steeves' farm. Janette, a little sore from the fall, thanked Dale and then watched as he swung the horse around, ready to firmly coach it across the mud again.

Fred occasionally made trips past the Rhine farm to pick up grain or some other necessity. One day he asked Janette and Margie if they would like to ride along and get off at Rhines' for a visit. He also suggested that they tie Beauty to the wagon so they could ride her home.

On arriving at the lane, Fred lifted them down, nodded his farewell, and set out again on his errand. With the little horse in tow, the girls walked down to the farmhouse but found no one home. Now having no reason to stay, they mounted the pony with the help of a wagon in the yard and started back toward home.

After traveling about halfway, a sudden storm struck. The thunder, lightning, hail, and freezing rain would have caused most ponies to bolt in fear, but not Beauty. She sauntered along, eating tufts of grass from beside the road, nibbling this and that, as though it were a lovely summer day and it had been a week since she had eaten anything. She seemed to be enjoying the freshness of the rain-washed grasses. Janette tried to hurry her up, but no matter how firmly she spoke or how much she dug in her heels and slapped the reins, Beauty paid no attention.

In the meantime, the girls were soaked to the skin with icy rainwater and pelted mercilessly with hailstones. At last they slid off. Janette and Margie had come to the conclusion that they needed help—desperately. So they did the only thing they knew to do.

Kneeling down in the middle of the muddy road, rain still beating on their heads and running over their faces, Janette held Beauty's reins in one hand and Margie's hand in the other and they prayed. This done, they started off again, now leading the stubborn pony in order to hurry her the best they could.

Amy, assuming that the girls were safe at the Rhines, had not been worrying. When Margie appeared at the door, dripping with rainwater and shivering with cold, Amy could hardly believe her eyes.

“Where's Janette?” she asked anxiously as she snatched a towel and wrapped Margie snugly in it. The answer to Margie seemed obvious. Janette had gone on to the barn to put Beauty away. They had been taught to always care for their horse after riding. Neither of the girls could quite understand why Amy seemed to be saying that Janette should have left Beauty standing in the yard and hurried into the house herself.

It was hours before either Janette or Margie could make her teeth stop chattering. Amy stripped them of their wet clothes, bundled them in something warm and dry, and put them in bed with hot water bottles under the covers.

Not until later did the remainder of the story come out. Amy looked surprised to hear of their spontaneous prayer meeting, but she was overheard sharing the story with guests, even relating the details to Rev. Hallman, the district superintendent, and his wife when they visited the Steeves' home.

Janette wondered why the kind gentleman seemed so impressed about two little girls kneeling down in the middle of a muddy road to pray for God's help. There simply had been no other place to kneel.

On rare and wonderful occasions there were trips south over the long, tiring miles to visit relatives still living on the prairie. Three homes clustered together at the Guess Ranch. Grandpa and Grandma Ruggles lived in a little house with a veranda lining the two sides. A “cook car” had been acquired some time before, and the kitchen on wheels had been “semi-attached” to the Ruggles' home. Here the women worked together to provide meals for all the families and any guests. Uncle Ross, Aunt Hazel, and family lived down the hill by the caragana hedge, and Uncle Wayne, Aunt Violet, and family lived in the small house to the south.

It was a wonderful place to visit. Cousins abounded, and those who did not live in the immediate vicinity were not too far away.

The favorite activity of the cousins was swinging on Grandpa's homemade porch swing. It was a wide affair with double-seats that faced one another and made complete with an attached floor between them. The whole swing was suspended from the veranda rafters. Hours were spent getting the swing, loaded with youngsters, to go as high as it could. The whole house must have rocked at times.

Fresh fruit was a real treat, especially juicy peaches. On one occasion it became known to the kids that Grandma Ruggles had some in her cellar. Whispered word came to Janette that there was to be a raid. Three or four of the boy cousins had decided that a fresh peach would taste really good, and they asked her if she'd like to get in on the treat. After momentary debate with her conscience, she agreed.

Soon she had joined the boys in one of the granaries and smacked her lips as peach juice dripped off her chin. As usually happens to offenders, they were caught and ended up having to face the probing but gentle eyes of their grandmother, Vi.

“If you had asked me, I would have given you a peach,” she said, the disappointment in her voice hurting much more deeply than a stern rebuke would have done.

Inwardly Janette wished to say, “But, Grandma—look at all the people. If you had tried to give everybody a peach, there wouldn't have been enough to go around. And you couldn't give them to just some of us.”

But in her heart she had the feeling that her grandmother, generous and giving as she was, would have found some way. Janette determined never to hurt her again.

Chapter Twelve

Antics

The Rhines' farm had a herd of sheep in one of its pastures. Among this herd was a ram that presented a constant threat to anyone trying to cross his domain. Dale, along with some of the older girls, developed a game of wits with the hot-tempered animal. They would draw his attention and then stand directly in front of a large tree. At the moment he put his head down and charged, they deftly stepped aside and the ram would crash against the tree. As he walked away, shaking his dizzy head at how such a small person could be so solidly built, the spectators would run off laughing.

Janette, afraid she might not move at the right time, never tried this bit of sport. And besides, though she did not voice her true feelings to the others, she felt just a little bit sorry for the cantankerous ram.

One day three of the girls decided to go for a horseback ride. They caught a couple of horses and set off through the pasture, Fern riding one and Janette and Faye sharing the other. They had often been warned not to ride among the rest of the horses, but in one of the impulsive moments of childhood, they paid little attention until they found their own horses out of control and running with the herd.

Then one of the horses began to buck. Faye and Janette clung desperately for several jumps, finally being thrown from the animal. As they scrambled up and dusted themselves off, the pair tried to shake the fright enough to chuckle at their mishap. Faye took a gulp of breath and reported that at one point, she put her hand down behind her to try to grab a handhold and found
mane
.

Then they did howl with laughter at the thought of Faye riding almost between the horse's ears and Janette bouncing along on its neck just behind her. Fortunately, they were not hurt badly.

Far more serious consequences could have resulted from another misguided idea. On a day when riding
behind
rather than
on
a horse sounded like a good idea, an old mare was harnessed to a stone boat. This piece of farm equipment looked much like a large wooden sled and was used to haul rocks out of the fields.

Once all the straps had been fastened into place, all the children piled onto the stone boat. They set out on an off-road, a single-vehicle rutted track. Grass and even small bushes grew on each side and spread down into an easy ditch for drainage.

The group had traveled only a short distance when they met one of the Rhines' uncles driving a team and wagon with a hayrack. No one was quite sure who was first to make the challenge for a race, but soon calls and dares were sounding from all sides and the offer for a race was accepted.

The load of children was rearranged, several of the smaller ones being sent up onto Uncle Jesse's hayrack. Then the horses were maneuvered into starting positions. Since there was room for only one vehicle on the road, the group on the stone boat took to the ditch. At the given signal they raced off.

The driver of the stone boat leaped into action, trying to steer clear of the biggest bushes and stones. Uncle Jesse's team had a definite advantage on the track, but the heavy wagon made a difficult load for racing.

Janette and the others on the stone boat were assigned the task of grabbing for handfuls of clod or anything else they could find to throw at their struggling horse. With no clear winner, Uncle Jesse had a good laugh—until he looked back down the road and realized what could have happened. He soberly concluded that had there been an accident, he would have found himself responsible for the results.

One summer, relatives visited the Yerricks, the owner-operator of the small Hoadley store. While they were in the area, the cousins often came to the Steeves' place to play summer evening games.

On one of those evenings while playing Hide-and-Seek around the barn, Janette jumped onto a board with some rusty old nails, and one pierced her shoe. Instantly she began to scream at the top of her lungs, and soon got all the attention she felt the situation merited. Kids came running from every direction, each of them exclaiming over her plight. Even in her pain she was pleased at drawing so much sympathy from the Turple boys, the visitors from the city. One nail had barely grazed the outside of her shoe, but the other could be seen protruding through the top, having obviously passed through her foot first. It looked quite terrifying.

“We've got to take her to Mom,” one of her sisters insisted and the others agreed. The children did not dare try to remove the nail from her foot, so they carried her to the house, the board still dangling. To Amy fell the task of removing the nails and calming the patient.

Amy spent much of the night soaking the foot, applying oatmeal poultices, and comforting a crying child. The poultices worked. For the next few days Amy wiped rust and pus from the hole in the small foot, but there was no serious infection. And since Vacation Bible School came soon after the incident, Janette attended that year hopping on one foot and minus one shoe, unable to wear the other until the swelling had gone down.

Somewhere and somehow, though money was still scarce, Dale Rhine got a truck. It was old and needed a great deal of work, but by then he had become quite a “tinkerer.” It had taken a good deal of tinkering to get that old Ford to run. Though the truck was still not in top form, and in spite of the crush of small bodies loaded inside it and the noise of them all talking at once, Dale set out for a test drive with the lot of them.

There was room for a few to sit in the front, and as many as would fit loaded themselves into the small open back. The few brave ones who were left jumped on the running boards and grasped any appendage that could be used for a handhold. Then the ride began.

Dale was struggling to hear the engine, but the racket around him was making it very difficult. In order to lean a little closer, he opened his door and tipped his head out to listen intently while the truck chugged its way down the rutted, dusty road.

What he failed to remember was that little Harvey had been riding the running board on the driver's side, gripping the door by the open window. The door swung open for a few moments and finally swung back. When Dale looked up, there was Harvey, still holding on for all he was worth, his eyes big and his knuckles almost white. Dale grinned—and the motley crew continued down the road.

When fall came, leaves rustled with each step along familiar paths through the woods, and it was time for the assigned task of berry picking. Amy sent the Steeves children out to pick, but they were never quite the experts that the Rhine kids were. These eight children would haul in pail after pail of saskatoons, blueberries, and cranberries every year, and Mrs. Rhine would have rows and rows of two-quart jars canned each fall. Often, especially during the war years, there was no sugar, but the berries were canned regardless. Then if they did have sugar by the time they opened the jar, they would sprinkle a little over the top. Otherwise they let the berries “sweeten themselves.”

Amy was concerned that the neighborhood children needed more Bible knowledge and began to send out invitations to a new Sunday school class, to be held at the Steeves' home.

She soon discovered that the Rhine children would not be allowed to attend on Sunday. Mrs. Rhine was Seventh Day Adventist in faith, and though she shared with Amy the desire to teach her children to honor God, her family felt that Saturday was the appropriate day of worship.

The Steeves children, being used to worshiping in different ways than the Rhine children, could not understand some of their “rules” but did not argue with them or try to dissuade them. So Amy switched the class to Saturday afternoon and everyone was satisfied.

Mrs. Rhine was determined to see that her children were raised properly and understood the importance of what she taught them. Janette remembers one occasion quite vividly. Some of the Rhine children had been playing in the Steeves' house, and late in the afternoon, the visitors headed out for their long walk home. The evening meal and activities were well underway for the Steeves children and darkness had already crowded against the windows when, suddenly, they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

It was Mrs. Rhine with Harvey in tow. After he had arrived home and had begun preparing for bed, she discovered some pennies in his pocket. With eyes lowered to the floor, Harvey shamefacedly admitted that he had taken them from the Steeves' home.

The woman was not willing to allow such an offense to remain until morning. So she boosted Harvey onto a horse and led him in the dark, over the rutted road and across the corduroy bog, through rows of tall pine and spruce without a light of any kind showing for miles, until she reached the Steeves' door.

Janette watched quietly as the mothers worked out the problem and then heard the click of the closing door.

“They could have waited until tomorrow. Why did they come so late at night?” she asked.

“Mrs. Rhine wanted to teach Harvey the importance of never taking anything that didn't belong to him,” Amy explained, and on that night the lesson engraved itself on
two
young minds.

One day, the Steeves heard that Fern Rhine had had an accident. The teen had dismounted her saddle horse in order to lead him across the stretch of corduroy, and the horse had balked, then decided to clear the dreaded spot in a single leap. As he jumped, his hoof struck Fern on her knee.

The leg swelled and went from bad to worse. Fern spent several weeks in the small Rimbey hospital and was finally transferred to another with more extensive facilities.

While Fern was still away receiving medical treatment, the Rhines decided to have a farm sale and move from the area. There was much sadness at the thought of losing such good neighbors and friends. The community quickly decided the Rhines should be given a surprise farewell party.

On the appointed evening, neighbors began to arrive at the Rhine home, and since the family had had no chance to prepare for their surprise guests and the home had no electricity, Mrs. Rhine was soon bustling around the house, searching for working lamps to adequately light the rooms.

On passing from room to room, Mrs. Rhine noticed many of the neighbors whispering soberly among themselves and was worried that the unexpected guests might be annoyed about her poorly lit home.

She resolutely set out her remaining lamps and turned to greet one of the last guests to arrive. This neighbor, late to the would-be party and unaware that the Rhines had no knowledge of the actual reason for the hushed whispers, extended his condolences to his hostess.

There was a little scream, and Mrs. Rhine fainted and fell to the floor. It was not until then the neighbor discovered that she had not yet been told about Fern's death. The tragic news had come shortly before, and the neighbors had been trying to decide how the mother should be told, and by whom.

Janette was horrified. The dimly lit house, the whispers, then the final revelation and reaction of her neighbor woman all felt like some strange chilling story. She had not seen anyone faint before and feared that Mrs. Rhine might be dead. Janette's immense relief when Mrs. Rhine stirred again was quickly changed back to dread with the despairing mother's sobs that followed. Janette was shaken to the core. It would be such a terrible thing to lose a child, and Janette wondered how Mrs. Rhine would cope. That night the walk home through the darkness was filled with sorrow and a strange fear.