Man of the Family (16 page)

As soon as we were out to the tracks, I backed the wagon into place at the pipe end, gave the children the sacks, and told them they could pick up coal while I was lining up ties. They started climbing the cinder bank while I was unhitching Lady from the wagon. I was only half done when Philip yelled from the top of the grade, “Ralph! Ralph! Come quick!”

I was afraid one of them was hurt, and went scrambling up the bank as fast as I could go. All the children were looking down into the hollow, and Philip was squealing, “Look! look!” When I got where I could see, I wanted to squeal myself. There were as many as a hundred ties, all piled up neat with their ends pointing toward the end of the drainpipe. Philip and Muriel thought Mr. McEnerney was going to have them burned before we could haul them away, but I didn't think so. Before we slid back down the bank, I whistled “Kathleen Mavourneen” as loud as I could.

We went after those ties like a family of pack rats. The only trouble we had was Hal's wearing the skin off his hands and knees. He was scrambling back and forth through the pipe like a prairie dog running for his hole, and before we finished loading I had to make him a set of pads from one of the gunny sacks.

We were starting to put on our fifth load when the section crew quit for the night. As they started away, they were making that chant the Mexicans always do when they're getting up speed on a handcar—halfway betwen a groan and a song. When I heard it, I said the first thing that came into my head. “Let's sing ‘Kathleen Mavourneen' for them as they go. Mr. McEnerney likes it and he's been awful good to us.” Then we went scrambling up the cinder bank so Mr. McEnerney could hear us. He did hear us, and waved as the handcar rolled away down the track.

We didn't hurry too much in putting the last load on the wagon, and it was after half past six before we drove into Mr. Carey's yard. When he opened his door and saw who it was, he said, “Good Lord, you haven't brought more ties, have you? What did you do, have half the kids in town help haul them?”

“No, sir,” I said, “Just Muriel and Philip and Hal. Father showed me how to do it when I was thinking about him last night; it was easy. Shall we bring you some more, tomorrow? There's still plenty left out there.”

“From the looks of the back yard, I've got enough to hold me for at least two years,” he said, “but all the neighbors are hollering for some. You won't have any trouble getting rid of all you can handle.” He put his hand down into his pocket, and said, “And now what can I do for you, Little Britches?”

“Well, we brought five loads and there were fifteen on each load; that's seven and a half, isn't it?”

“Lord sakes alive!” he chuckled: “I'm surprised you didn't just move a section of the track down here. Emma was telling me how you unloaded them.” All the time he was talking he was picking over a handful of coins with his thumb and finger. Then he handed me a five-dollar gold piece and three cartwheels. “Just squares the bill,” he said; “bet you kids don't have to be rocked to sleep tonight.”

I wanted to run out to the wagon to show the youngsters our eight dollars, and to tell them about being able to sell all the ties we could haul, but I didn't let myself. I just thanked Mr. Carey and shook hands. Then I walked out his driveway as though I wasn't in any hurry at all, and drove over to Mr. Shellabarger's. I wanted to change the five-dollar gold piece into cartwheels, so we could each have two to take home to Mother.

We argued most of the way home. I thought it would be nicest for Hal to take his two dollars in to Mother first, but Muriel didn't think so. She always wanted to do things as if it were a play. “That wouldn't be any good,” she said. “If Hal goes in first and gives her the money, she'll start crying right away. But if you give her yours first, she'll just say we were smart children to make so much money. And then I'll give her mine, and she'll say, ‘Why, why . . . where in the world did you get so much money?' And then Philip can give her his, and she'll look like she thought maybe we'd robbed a bank. And
then
when Hal gives her his, we'll all want to cry.”

It worked just the way she thought it would.

18

The Red Spots Come Out

O
UR COOKERY
orders for the middle Saturday in September were way the biggest we'd ever had. Even though Mother had told me to get all the orders I could, I should have known better than to take so many. Elizabeth was only six weeks old, and Mother still had dizzy spells when she worked too long in a hot kitchen.

Wednesday night, when Philip and I got home from our route, Mother asked for the order book the first thing. She leafed through the pages quickly till she came to the orders we'd just taken. As she turned one new page after another, she said, “My . . . My! . . .
My!
For pity's sake . . . why . . . they must have been talking about my banana cream pies. Gracious! Isn't this a lovely batch of orders? It must amount to fifty dollars.”

Grace was about as mad as Mother was happy. While I was milking, she came out to the barn and gave me the dickens. “What in the world is the matter with your head?” she asked me. “Do you want Mother to kill herself? You know she won't let me stay up late and help her. And if she works straight through, from now till Saturday noon, she can never get all that stuff out. Oh, you make me sick! And Muriel and Hal coming down with colds! They've had the sniffles all day!”

“Well,” I said, “Mother told me to get all the orders I could. Don't you want me to do what she tells me?”

“Hmmff, you didn't think about that at the fairgrounds, did you?” was all Grace said. Then she went out and slammed the barn door.

Thursday morning, Philip was sneezing as if he had pepper in his nose, and Hal and Muriel were feverish and fractious. Mother and Grace were too busy to have them underfoot, so Mother let me stay home from school to keep them upstairs. They didn't like the medicine they had to take, and they got tired of my reading to them in less than an hour. I tried to tell them stories, but by suppertime I couldn't think of any whoppers big enough to keep them interested. Mother let me help her and Grace till nine o'clock, and then she made us both go to bed, but she wouldn't go herself.

Friday, the children were harder to take care of than they had been the day before. That night Mother let Grace and me help her till ten o'clock, but I think she worked all night.

Saturday morning when I started to get out of bed, I felt as if I were ninety-seven years old and had rheumatism all over.

Grace was moving around in her room as I was pulling my overalls on, so I went to her door and said, real low, “How does your back feel this morning? My bones ache.”

She opened her door just a crack, and whispered, “Keep still! Do you want Mother to hear you?”

Her voice sounded like cornhusks being rubbed together, so I whispered back, “You're sick. You've got a sore throat, haven't you?”

“I am not sick,” she yapped back at me, “and you're not either. Have you still got that piece of slippery elm out in the barn?”

I did have two little pieces of slippery elm left. Father and I used to keep a chunk in our mouths when we were thrashing beans. It helped to keep our throats from getting dry when the chaff was dusty. I took one of the pieces with me when I carried the milk bucket into the kitchen. All I had to do was to open my hand a little as I walked past Grace. She picked it out and slipped it into her mouth.

About ten o'clock that forenoon, Mother called up the stairs for me to harness Lady and get her another hundred pounds of sugar. When I got home with it, I couldn't take the sack of sugar off the wagon. There wasn't enough gimp in my legs, and my hands kept slipping off the ears of the sack. Grace had been watching me from the kitchen window, and she came out with two ten-pound lard pails. She was as crotchety as an old setting hen. “Don't be trying to play you're a big man all the time,” she wheezed at me. “You're always trying to carry a lazy man's load and break your back. Now open one ear of that sack and fill these pails—and don't spill it; it's four cents a pound.”

“Oh, don't be so smart,” I yapped at her. “You're nothing but a little pigtail girl yourself, and you're trying to act like you're the boss of everything.”

Instead of getting peeved the way she always did if I snapped at her, Grace looked up at me, and two big tears popped into her eyes. Before I could say anything, she turned and ran into the barn. By the time I got there she had her head down on the bran bin, and was crying as if I'd hit her. I told her I was sorry, and that I guessed I needed to be bossed a little, but she couldn't stop crying. At last, I said, “You're just as sick as Hal or Muriel or Philip. Why don't you admit it and let Mother doctor you?”

“I'm
not
going to be sick,” she cried, “but I hurt all over. My back feels like I've got a toothache in it, and my eyes smart. But if we don't get this stuff finished, now it's half done, we'll lose all it cost and our customers, too.”

I had to get some cold water so that Grace could wash her face before we went into the house. All the doughnuts still had to be fried and the banana pies made before I could start on my cookery route, so Mother had me stay in the kitchen and help. The younger children were upstairs by themselves, and were fussing and coughing most of the time.

Just when Mother was mixing doughnuts and had the dough halfway up to her elbows, Muriel began calling to her from the top of the stairs. Mother raised her head, and swiped a loose lock of hair back from her forehead with her shoulder. Then she called, “You'll have to wait a few minutes, Muriel. Mother's got her hands right in the dough. I'll come up just as soon as I can.”

Muriel started to cry, and sobbed, “There's something the matter with Philip. He's getting spots all over his neck.”

Mother stood for a minute with her face as blank as a stone, and her mouth half open. Then she swung toward the wash-basin, and called, “Mother's coming, dear. Mother's coming right away.” She almost ran for the stairs.

In five minutes she was back. Her face seemed perfectly calm, but her lips were pressed firmly together. Her voice was steady and low when she said, “Come over here by the window, children, and let me look at your throats. All three of the younger children have the measles, and I think you both have them, too.”

After she'd looked at our throats, the backs of our necks, and behind our ears, she felt of our foreheads and our pulses. “Hmmm, hmmm,” she said, “there isn't a sign of rash such as the other children have, but your throats are badly inflamed and you both have considerable fever. I don't think there's any question about it; you're both coming down with measles. That's going to mean that we can't make our delivery; we'll just have to throw the food out.”

I was just sort of numb, but Grace went all to pieces. She cried till she could hardly catch her breath, and kept saying over and over, “Why do we have to throw it out? Why do we have to throw it out? Food can't catch the measles, can it? Couldn't we get Dutch Gunther to deliver it for us? Why do we have to know we've got the measles till after it's all sold? Maybe it's just prickly heat the others have. . . . It's been hotter'n haying time all week.”

Mother held Grace's head against her shoulder, and kept brushing her hair back. I don't believe there was ever another woman like Mother. She'd get nervous and upset about lots of little things, but if something really big happened she'd be perfectly calm. “There, there, Gracie,” she said as she stroked, “I'm quite positive it's measles, but we won't do anything until we've had the doctor and are sure. If it is measles, we couldn't run the risk of spreading them.”

Between her sore throat, crying, and having her face buried in Mother's shoulder, Grace's voice sounded as though she might be talking from down in a well. “You and Ralph and I haven't got any pimples,” she cried, “and we're the only ones that touched a crumb of this food. How can food catch measles, anyway?”

“There, there, child,” Mother crooned, “don't you worry a speck about it. What's a little food compared to a possible contagion? There, there, now don't cry any more. Poor child, poor child, I've let you wear yourself all out.”

It wasn't till then that the tears in Mother's eyes spilled over. But Grace couldn't see them, and went right on, “A little food!” she cried. “It'll take half the money we've got in the bank just to pay Mr. Shellabarger.”

Mother wanted to be alone with Grace. She reached her free arm out toward me, then pulled me close against her, and said, “Son, do you feel all right to ride down and ask Doctor Crysler to come out? But don't go near any other children till we're sure about this.”

I rode Lady down to Dr. Crysler's office as fast as she could run. When we swung around the corner at Main Street, I nearly ran right into Sheriff McGrath. He was just coming out of the livery stable. “Wait up, there, Little Britches!” he shouted. “Where's the fire at?” I didn't stop, but called back that there wasn't any fire, but I was going for the doctor.

Doctor Crysler was out on a call, so I left word for him to come to our house as soon as he could. Then, when I came out of the office, Sheriff McGrath was waiting for me. He rode as far as the gristmill corner, and he asked me a hundred questions, but all I could tell him was that Mother thought the children had measles.

Grace and I never saw what happened to the cookery. We only knew it was never delivered to our customers. I hadn't been home more than fifteen minutes before Doctor Crysler came, and he made Grace and me go right to bed. All the rest of the afternoon, Mother kept bringing lemonade that was so hot it nearly took the skin off the roof of my mouth, and some brown medicine the doctor had sent out from the drugstore. The medicine wasn't too bad, but the hot lemonade was terrible, and Mother kept making us drink a whole glassful every half hour.

As it got along toward late afternoon, I began to worry about my chores. Mother told me to stop worrying, that she could take care of them all right. But she didn't have to. When the sun was just beginning to slip down over the roof of our barn, I heard Sheriff McGrath driving Ducklegs up the lane. There was never a bit of trouble in bringing her home; she'd come all by herself; but the sheriff was hollering as though he'd been moving a herd of a thousand wild steers.

The doctor came back again just before dark. First, he and Mother went into her room to see Hal, and then into the girls' room. It seemed as if he stayed in the girls' room an hour before he came in to see Philip and me. He only said, “Fine, fine,” when he pulled up Philip's nightshirt and looked at his stomach. But he went all over me as though I'd been a horse he was thinking of buying. At last, he hung his ear jiggers around the back of his neck, and said to Mother, “Well, the younger ones seem to be coming along fairly well, but we'll have to bring out the rash on the two older ones. I'll send you out some different medicine for them, and they'll have to be kept in absolute darkness. The fever will break when the rash comes, and plenty of good hot lemonade should help it along.”

As soon as the doctor left, I heard Mother hammering down in the parlor. Once in a while she'd stop, then hammer again. In half an hour she came up and took Grace downstairs. Then she came for me. The parlor was black as pitch, but Mother knew where everything was and put me in a cot by the closed double doors. I don't know how long Mother sat up with us that night, but it seemed as though she brought hot lemonade and medicine a hundred times.

Before Doctor Crysler came the next day, I'd begun to sweat and get itchy. I felt a lot better, but Grace was worse, and she couldn't get the cookery out of her mind. When she was awake she kept quiet unless Mother or I asked her a question, but as soon as she'd go to sleep she'd start mumbling. Most of it wasn't clear enough so that I could make it out, but every once in a while she'd say, right out loud, “Food can't catch the measles, can it? How can food catch the measles?”

Either my measles came out with the sweat, or the sweat came out with the measles. When Doctor Crysler came, he looked at my stomach and said I had a good heavy rash. He seemed worried about Grace though, and I heard him tell Mother they'd have to keep wet sheets on her till they could control the fever. He hadn't been gone ten minutes before Grace began jumping around on her cot. Every few minutes she'd call out a few words that didn't mean anything, and then lie and groan.

Mother ran back and forth to the kitchen two or three times, getting cold sheets and wrapping them around Grace. Then she came and leaned over my cot. She was trying to make her voice sound calm, but it was quivery when she whispered, “I shall have to get to a telephone. Do you think you could sit by Gracie's bed and keep her quiet for the few minutes I'm gone? Keep the cold sheets right up around her and don't let her throw them off. I'll hurry as fast as I can.”

I tried to croon to Grace, but I was so scared that my voice kept choking, and only started her jumping all over again. I tried to hold her still, but I couldn't. I was as weak as a kitten, and she seemed to be as strong as a tiger. Twice, when I tried to wrap the wet sheets back around her, she threw me down onto the floor with her arm.

It was probably just a few minutes that Mother was gone, but it seemed hours to me. It was an eighth of a mile to a telephone. When Mother came back into the parlor, she was panting so hard it sounded as though she were crying. I'm sure Grace didn't hear what I'd been saying to her, but as soon as Mother began stroking her forehead and crooning she quieted down.

Doctor Crysler came again within a few minutes after Mother got back. After he'd looked at Grace for a minute or two, he and Mother went out into the front hall. I could hear them talking low out there before the doctor went.

Mother never left Grace's bed except to get more cold sheets. She kept crooning all the time. I couldn't make out any words she was saying, but her voice seemed calm and steady. Then, as she opened the hall door to wet another sheet, I heard her catch her breath as though she were going to break down. She never did. But an hour later, when the hall door opened and Doctor Browne came in with Doctor Crysler, Mother almost ran toward them, and sobbed, “Oh, Doctor Browne, my little girl is awfully sick.”