Man of the Family (6 page)

7

The Sheriff Lends a Hand

W
HEN
we'd first moved down to Littleton from the ranch, Mrs. Lenheart, the lady we bought our milk from, had asked me to drive her to Petersburg to deliver some rabbits. She had lots of them. I didn't know how much to charge her for the trip, so she had given me two half-grown rabbits. Father had helped me build a hutch for them, and they had grown to beat the band.

That first day I picked up coal along the railroad tracks, my rabbits started acting crazy. I didn't know what could be the matter with them, so I asked Mother to come out and see if they were sick. I thought maybe I'd cut some locoweed in with the grass I'd been feeding them.

It was Wednesday, and Mother was hurrying to get everything ready for my afternoon delivery. She was all flushed from the hot kitchen, but she threw a shawl over her shoulders and came out to the hutch with me. She only looked in each pen half a minute, then said, “Why, they're sisters, aren't they? Didn't they come from the same litter?”

“I don't know,” I said. “They were in a pen with four or five others. Mrs. Lenheart just put her hand in and gave me the first two she got hold of.”

“Well . . . ,” Mother said, “I don't think there's anything wrong with them, except that they're lonesome.”

“Oh, I hadn't thought about that,” I said. “I'll just put them both together in one pen.”

“No, no. I wouldn't do that, Son. They're a little bit upset right now—they might quarrel. You know, sisters sometimes do.”

“Well, what can I do, then?”

“Hmmm,” Mother said. “Dutch Gunther has rabbits, doesn't he? Did his come from Mrs. Lenheart's stock?”

“No,” I said, “he got his from Floyd Hornbuckle; they're kind of reddish brown instead of gray like Mrs. Lenheart's.”

“Why, that's fine!” Mother said. “Why don't you swap one of your rabbits with Dutch? Then you'd have one of each kind, wouldn't you?”

“But I don't want one of each kind,” I said. “Mine are prettier than Dutch's, and, besides, they're fatter.”

“Mmmm, yes,” Mother said, “I know. Well, maybe you could just borrow one of Dutch's to come over and visit yours for a few days till they get over being lonesome. Do you think that would be all right?”

“I guess it would, but isn't borrowing a rabbit almost like borrowing a horse?”

“Well . . . not exactly . . . in this case,” Mother said. “I think it would be the right thing to do. Now you come in while I scribble a note to Mrs. Gunther. I'm certain she would be glad to help you boys pick out just the right one.”

Dutch had seven rabbits, counting the one that had the litter, but there was only one his mother would let me borrow. That was a scrawny-looking old one that was so mean he had to be kept in a tin-lined box or he'd gnaw out. When I picked him up, he nearly tore my shirt sleeve off with his hind toenails. After that I didn't want to borrow him at all. I was afraid he'd make my rabbits more upset than ever, but Mrs. Gunther seemed to want me to take him, so I did. I carried him home in an old onion sack, and put him in the top pen in the hutch, but he didn't like it. He raced around it like a loco horse in a box stall, and banged his hind feet down on the floor boards so hard it sounded as though somebody might be hitting them with a hammer.

Mother must have heard him clear in the house, because she put her shawl on again and came out to the hutch. We stood there looking at him for a minute or two. Then Mother said, “I believe you could raise us some awfully good meat at very little expense. That is, if you knew just how to take care of these rabbits.”

“I do know just how to take care of them,” I said. “My rabbits are the biggest ones in town for their age, and I took care of them all by myself.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, “but now you need to get more little rabbits, don't you?”

“It would be easier,” I told her, “if I had Lady so I could take Mrs. Lenheart on more trips. But I can earn some money from Mr. Wilke and buy little ones for a quarter apiece from Floyd Hornbuckle. Or, for seventy-five cents, I can get one that's going to have a litter, like Dutch did.”

“Mmmm . . . hmmm . . . you could,” Mother said; “but aren't these two sister rabbits of yours about old enough to be married? Maybe this old fellow would make them a good husband.”

“No, I don't think so,” I said. “He's mean. He nearly tore my shirt sleeve off, and he chewed his own pen half to pieces before Dutch put tin on it. He'd kill 'em both the first thing he did.”

“Oh, I don't think he'd harm them a bit. I think he'd make them a good husband.”

“Well, he can be their husband if you want him to,” I said, “but he'll have to stay in his own pen. I know he'd kill them if he ever got a chance. You don't know how mean he is.”

Mother put her arm around my shoulder, and led me over by the barn door. We both sat down on the sill, and Mother said, “Do you remember how Father planted the beans?”

“Sure, I do,” I said. “I helped him. Father plowed the field while I was at school, but on Saturday we dug the hills; then Father put in the seeds and stepped on them.”

“That's it,” she said. “Father put in the seeds and pressed them into the warm earth so they would grow. Now, what's the big difference between rabbits and beans?”

“Well . . . I guess you mean, because one's an animal and the other's a vegetable.”

“That's it, Son,” she told me. “A rabbit is warm, and has blood in it, and gives milk for its young; but a bean is cold, and doesn't have blood in it, or give milk for its young. A bean seed can draw its strength from the warm ground, but a rabbit seed has to draw its strength from the blood of its mother. Just as your father planted the bean seed in the ground, the father rabbit will have to plant the rabbit seed in the mother rabbit where it can draw its strength from her blood. Now, I'm going into the house, and I think it would be a good idea if you put one of your does in to visit with Dutch's buck.”

I guess I'd always known there were stallions and bulls and roosters. I'd seen them plenty of times on the ranches, but I'd never bothered to think what they were there for. Chickens just pecked their way out of eggs, and Mother always had said that God was going to send Lady a new colt in the spring. After she'd gone back into the house, I put one of my does into the pen with Dutch's buck. They didn't fight at all.

That Wednesday night I got an awful toothache. Mother had Grace hold her glass to shine lamplight into my mouth while she tried to see what the matter was. It must have looked worse to her than it really was, because she said, “My, my! I've been so neglectful of you children's teeth. You should have been to the dentist a year ago . . . but . . . My! these dentists are so expensive. . . . Of course, they have to have expensive educations, but . . . Well, there's no sense in talking, it's a permanent tooth, and I'm afraid the nerve is exposed. You'll just have to stay out of school again tomorrow morning, and we'll go down to see Dr. Austin—I understand he's not as expensive as that young dentist in the bank building.”

As soon as I finished my milk route the next morning, Mother and I went down to the village. At first she walked right along with her back straight and her head way up—the way she always used to—but before we got as far as Main Street she was all tired out, and she had to rest twice going up the steps to Dr. Austin's office over Monahan's saloon.

Dr. Austin was a nice old man, but he hurt me so much I nearly squeezed the arms off his swivel chair. He had a machine drill with a treadle like a sewing machine's, and before he was through drilling I thought my whole head was afire.

After Mother had given him the dollar and a half for fixing my tooth, we went down to Mr. Shellabarger's. Mother wanted to stop in and thank him for the package of meat that he always gave me on Saturday when I paid the bill. Just as we were turning in at the store, I saw Sheriff McGrath come riding around the corner by the gristmill. He was riding his chestnut horse, and leading a flea-bitten gray on a halter rope. I told Mother I had to ask him if there were any more cattle coming through town, and I'd wait for her out front. But that wasn't really what I was thinking about.

I walked down the sidewalk a little ways to meet him, and yelled, “Hi, Sheriff,” so he'd be sure to see me. When he pulled up, I said, “Did you hear of any more cattle coming through town this spring? I'm sorry the boys ran some of those last ones, but I couldn't help it.”

“Hell, no! Course you couldn't help it,” the sheriff hollered. “No, ain't heard of no cattle movin' this-a-way. How's your maw?”

“I'm kind of worried about her,” I said. “She had to walk clear down here with me this morning to go to the dentist, and she's all tuckered out. She's in Shellabarger's Market, but I thought if I stood out here I might see somebody with a rig that was going our way and would give us a ride home.”

The sheriff looked up and down Main Street, but the only rig in sight was Gunther's express wagon backed up to Kinkel's Market. “By George, you picked one hell of a time-a-day for gettin' a lift. Ain't a team in sight no place. Why'n't you come around mail time, or why'n't you let me know you was comin'? Tell you what you do, by George, you start your maw a-walkin' slow along the highroad, somebody's apt to come along.” He jerked the front of his hat down over his forehead and kicked the spurs into his horse just the way I'd thought he would.

Mother and I hadn't gone as far as the gristmill corner before I heard wheels rattling behind us, and the fast spank of shod hoofs on the hard dirt road. I didn't have to look around; the sheriff hollered before he was within fifty yards of us, “Mornin', Miz Moody. Fine mornin', ain't it?”

He pulled the front wheel into the gutter beside us, and cramped the team way around so it would be easy for Mother to get in. “By George, it's right good to see you lookin' so pert,” he said. “Thought you looked a mite peaked when I seen you couple of weeks ago. How's your garden doin'?”

He didn't give Mother a chance to say a word, but swung his reins around the whip socket and climbed out of the buckboard with his big hat in his hand. He was still hollering as if we were half a mile away when he put one hand under Mother's elbow and said, “Step right in, step right in, Miz Moody. Happens I'm a-goin' right out past your place. Gotta see what damage them last cattle done Horn's and Lenheart's fences.” He turned his head a little and winked at me as he said it.

Mother never did guess that I had anything to do with the sheriff driving us home, or if she did she never let me know it. She just bowed her head the least little bit, smiled as she got in, said, “Thank you so much, Mr. McGrath. It's very nice of you to stop and pick us up. The garden is doing splendidly. We haven't lost a single tomato plant.”

She said it just as quietly as could be, but that was about all she had a chance to say. The sheriff didn't holler any more, and he just let the team amble along, but he kept talking all the way to our house. It was mostly about me being full of vinegar and needing a man to look after me a little, and about how good Mother's beans and brown bread were—he'd told me to leave him a quart of beans and a loaf of brown bread at Shellabarger's every Wednesday and Saturday.

After Sheriff McGrath helped Mother down at our front gate, he didn't seem to be in any hurry to go. He pushed his hat back on his head and put one foot up on the wheel hub. “Nice little layout you got here, Miz Moody,” he said. “A whit too clost to the edge of town and the railroad for a widda woman to be livin' alone. Ain't been troubled none with hobos, have ya?”

Mother had opened the gate. She went through and closed it with me still on the outside. Then she smiled and bowed her head just a little bit toward the sheriff before she said, “No, we haven't had a bit of trouble. I feel very safe here with my children. Thank you again, Mr. McGrath.” Then she turned toward the front steps.

He twisted his mustache back from his mouth, and said, “Don't you go tryin' to walk down to the village no more, Miz Moody. Jest let me know any time you feel a hankerin' to go and I'll pick you up. No trouble at all, line o' duty keeps me on the streets almost continual.”

By that time Mother was right up to the front door. She opened it, and smiled again before she went in. “Good morning, Mr. McGrath,” she said. “It is a nice morning, isn't it?”

8

Picking Cherries on Stilts

C
HERRIES
and strawberries ripened soon after school let out for the summer. Most of the kids in Littleton liked to pick fruit, but a lot of them couldn't get jobs. They played too much, and they liked eating the fruit better than picking it.

It was Sheriff McGrath who found us our first picking job. I was working in our own garden when the sheriff rode up the lane. He didn't get off his horse, but shouted to me across the fence, “Thought you was workin' for Wilke; how come you ain't over there?”

“He isn't at home, Sheriff,” I called back, “and he didn't leave me any work to do.”

“Ain't to home?” the sheriff bellowed, “Where's he at? What's he a-payin' ya, anyhow?”

“Five cents an hour,” I told him, “but I can't count on a regular week's pay because he gets drunk so much.”

“By George, he ain't usin' you right, Little Britches!” the sheriff hollered. “You're doin' him a man's job and he oughta be givin' you a man's pay. Yes, by George, dollar a day! Why'n't you quit him and go to pickin' cherries? Ernie Ballad's payin' a quarter of the pick this year. He'll start Monday mornin'. You go see him an' I'll put in a word for you.”

Just then, Mother flipped the screen door open a few inches to shoo out a fly with her apron. I wouldn't have noticed her if Sheriff McGrath hadn't called, “Mornin', Miz Moody. Fine mornin', ain't it?”

Mother said it was a lovely morning. Then, as she closed the door, she asked him if he'd noticed how nicely our tomatoes were doing. When the sheriff said, “Now, ain't them purty! Miz Moody, you shore have got a green thumb,” his voice was almost as quiet as Mother's.

She just said, “Thank you, Mr. McGrath,” and turned back from the door. The sheriff stayed and talked to me for another ten minutes, but Mother didn't come to the door again.

Ernie Ballad was foreman on Gallup's ranch. It was up on the hill, east of town, and not far beyond where I had to go with my cookery route. I didn't get a chance to go up there until Saturday afternoon. Then, when we were in the middle of our delivery, I left Philip with the wagon while I ran over to see Ernie Ballad. I tried to get jobs for all of us, but I couldn't. Ernie said he didn't want any flock of little kids breaking down his trees and eating six cherries for every one they put in the boxes, but he'd let me try my hand because the sheriff said I was a steady worker. The last thing he told me was, “Understand, I'll fire you the first time I catch you playing or breaking a tree. And bring along an old pair of scissors; I don't allow no pull-picking.”

When we got home, Mother was as tickled about the picking job as I. “Wasn't Mr. McGrath thoughtful to speak for you?” she said. “Just think how nice it will be to have cherry pies in the middle of next winter. I'll make a bargain with all you children right now: for every bit of fruit you bring home this summer—and sugar to go with it—I'll find jars somewhere, and can it for next winter. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have a whole cellarful of canned fruit for the winter? Why, it would be just like the days on the farm when I was a little girl.”

Everybody liked Mother's bargain, but the others weren't very happy about the cherry picking business. I guess they didn't believe me when I said I'd tried to get jobs for the rest of them. Grace was the only one who got peeved about it, though. She said I was as clumsy with a pair of scissors as a hen in a duck pond, and picking fruit was girl's work anyway. Mother kind of sided in with her, too. She said it was a shame Grace couldn't have a day or two outdoors picking fruit, instead of being cooped up in a hot kitchen, but maybe her chance would come when strawberries were ripe.

I didn't do too well my first day at Gallup's. I wasn't tall enough to reach many cherries from the ground, and all the ladders were too heavy for me to move around. It wasn't that they were so heavy, either, but they were too tall, and unless I was real careful they'd topple over when I went to move them. And Grace was right about the scissors. Long before noon, I had all the skin worn off my left thumb—scissors never did work with my right hand. I only picked six boxes of cherries all day, and some of the older girls picked as many as a dozen.

Mother bandaged my thumb as soon as I came home from work. Then she cut all but the thumb and forefinger out of one of her old kid gloves, so I'd be able to wear it the next day. After I went to bed I figured out what to do about the ladders. When we lived on the ranch, Father made stilts for Grace and me, and we got so we could walk almost as well with them as without them. At first I thought I could make myself a pair of stilts like those to pick cherries from, but the more I thought about it, the surer I was that it wouldn't work. We had always used both hands to hold the stilts up, and I couldn't pick cherries without my hands. Then the answer came all in a flash after I'd stopped trying to figure it out.

The next morning I was up by half past four. I had to wake Mother too, because I needed the key to Father's tool chest. At first she told me to go back to bed and get my rest, but I think she could see that I wouldn't sleep anyway, so she got up and gave me the key. And she let me have Father's old black belt.

It wasn't too hard to make the stilts after I'd found a two-by-two. I had to take one of the roosts out of the henhouse. It was a good long one—about fourteen feet—and it sagged in the middle, but that was so much the better. When I sawed it in half, it made the uprights a little bowlegged. I nailed the belt to the top ends, so I could buckle it around my chest, spiked on footrests with leather toe loops, and tacked on straps I could fasten above my knees. After half an hour's practice, I could walk with them pretty well.

Ernie Ballad didn't like the idea of my stilts at first. He was standing by the gate when I got to Gallup's, and told me that he didn't want any monkeyshines. Before he'd let me take them into the orchard, I had to put them on and show him how well I could walk on them, and how high I could reach. He liked it when I told him that most of the trees were broken from moving the ladders, and that, with my stilts, I wouldn't need a ladder. So he let me try using them to pick cherries, and they worked all right. The glove Mother made me worked fine, too. I picked fourteen boxes of cherries that day, and didn't break a single limb.

All the cherry pickers were a lot older than I, and a good many of them were grown men and women. But more than half of them wanted to try my stilts. Of course, I couldn't let them do it while I was working, so I said that anybody who wanted to, could try them at noon. At least a dozen of them tried, and took some terrible spills. After one of the older boys nearly broke his arm, Ernie Ballad wouldn't let them try any more. But that night, when I was ready to leave, he said, “Any other of you kids at home that can walk on stilts as good as you can?”

I said, “Sure, Grace could always walk better on them than I, and she's a lot faster with a pair of scissors, too. She helps Mother with the sewing all the time.”

He nodded over toward where some of the ladies were getting their things together, and said, “Some of these old biddies ain't too good. Bring your sister along with you in the morning.”

“I can't bring her tomorrow,” I told him. “She has to help Mother with the cooking. And I'll only be able to pick till about eleven o'clock myself. Philip and I have to take the cookery stuff around tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, how about Thursday morning?”

“Sure,” I said, “and I could bring Muriel and Philip, too. They'd both be able to walk all right on stilts.” Neither of them had ever tried stilts, but I knew I could teach them how before Thursday morning came.

Ernie just squinnied up his eye at me a little, and asked, “How old are these other kids?”

I didn't want to tell him in years, so I said, “They're both old enough to pick cherries, and Philip's bigger than I am—he weighs two pounds more.”

Ernie just grinned and slapped me on the shoulder, “Well, we'll give Grace a whirl at it first. If she works out all right I'll think about the other two. Is that fair enough?” I told him it was, and ran most of the way home to tell them.

Mother wouldn't let me take the other roost out of the henhouse—so we had to buy three two-by-twos at the lumberyard. They weren't very straight ones, and they cost seventy-five cents, but Mother said it was an investment that would pay good dividends in cherries. It did, too.

I made Grace's stilts the same size as mine, and she didn't have to practice any more than I did before she could use them fine. But Philip and Muriel might just as well have been trying to walk on a couple of telephone poles. Of course, I had to make stilts for them, too, but theirs couldn't be nearly so tall.

Grace was better at most everything than I—except horses. Even her first day she picked sixteen boxes of cherries to my fifteen. Friday night, Ernie Ballad said we could bring Philip and Muriel with us on Monday, but we'd have to promise not to get sore if he didn't keep them. He did, though, and they could each pick eight or ten boxes a day. We all worked together—one tree at a time—and we didn't leave it till we had the very last cherry; so Ernie Ballad kept us till the very last. Grace and I picked from the higher limbs while Muriel and Philip picked from the lower ones. Then, all together, we'd move the ladder around so I could go up and clean the very top of the tree.

We got paid a quarter of the pick, the way the sheriff said we would, but not a quarter of all we picked. The way it worked was that after we'd picked four boxes for Ernie we could pick one for ourselves. We planned to leave all our picking for the last, so that Grace would be at home to help Mother with the canning after the picking was finished.

But we were all so busy with the picking that we didn't notice till there wasn't enough fruit left on the trees to pay us. Mr. Gallup was a smart man, and it didn't take him two minutes to get us straightened out.

Ernie was looking at the little book where he always wrote down the day's picking. He had added our number of boxes up twice, and was going back over it again, when Mr. Gallup said, “Well, Ernie, what seems to be the trouble, can't you fellows get together?”

“I must be wrong some place, Mr. Gallup,” Ernie said. “I get four hundred and eight boxes, but them kids couldn't have picked that many.”

“The devil they couldn't,” Mr. Gallup said. “Didn't you tell me they were hitting about fifty boxes a day?”

“Well, yes,” Ernie told him, “but Wednesdays and Saturdays the oldest girl laid off in the mornings, and the boys in the afternoons—none of them worked at all Sundays.”

“So,” Mr. Gallup said, “five days a week, two weeks, fifty boxes a day; four hundred and eight sounds reasonable enough to me.”

“Well, Mr. Gallup,” Ernie said, “there ain't more than forty boxes left on the trees. Where they going to pick their share?”

“Good Lord,” Mr. Gallup laughed, “you don't think their mother wants them lugging home a hundred boxes of cherries, do you?” Then he turned around to me and asked, “Wouldn't you rather have cash than cherries?”

“Well, I guess it would depend on how much cash,” I said.

“That ought to be easy. Let's see, I get six bits a box f.o.b. Denver. Take off a fifth for picking, that's fifteen cents, then there's box, packing, and hauling; say a dime for that. Tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a check for fifty dollars, and if you finish out the orchard you can have ten boxes to take home to your mother. How's that?”

At first I thought I'd have to go and get Grace to help me with the arithmetic, but when he said “fifty dollars,” I just hollered, “That would be fine,” before I even thought about arithmetic.

I thought Mother was going all to pieces when we brought the check home. We'd let Philip and Muriel draw straws to see which one would give it to her, because neither of them had ever earned any money before. Muriel won. It was after dark when we got home—we had worked as late as we could see, so as to finish the orchard—and Mother had worried a good deal about us. She must have heard our feet on the boardwalk to the back door. Just as we came up to the steps she flung the door open, and her voice was pretty sharp when she said, “Where in the
world
have you children been till this hour of night? I was nearly worried to death, and Ducklegs has been lowing to be milked for the last hour.” Muriel went running up the steps, flapping the check in her hand, and squealing, “Look what we got, Mother; look what we got! Fifty dollars! And it's all our own . . . and we're going to get cherries, too.”

For about half a minute Mother looked as though she were going to fall down. Her mouth came part way open, and she teetered a little, as if she was dizzy. Then she put both hands over her face and began to laugh and cry all at the same time. Grace got her to sit down in a chair by the table, but Mother couldn't hold her hands still, and she couldn't stop laughing and crying. It must have been at least five minutes before she could say anything—it seemed like an hour—and Grace had to put a cold towel on her forehead. She was still catching her breath every two or three words, when she said, “Oh, children, you don't know what a load this takes off my mind. I was
so
afraid of what's coming, but now we are all right. Now I
know
God is taking care of us . . . and we're always going to be all right.”