Summer of the Monkeys (32 page)

“Papa,” I said, “Grandpa and Grandma are going into town tomorrow. He said if you and I would take care of the store, Mama and Daisy could ride in with them and catch the train.”

Papa looked at Mama and said, “As long as we have waited for this day, I can’t see any reason to put it off. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Mama said, all excited. “Why, I’d go this very minute if I could.”

“Then start packing,” Papa said. “Don’t worry about Jay Berry and me. We’ll make out all right.”

Mama and Daisy were off in another room packing their clothes when Papa said, in a low voice, “Son, I wanted to say this before but I didn’t want your mother and Daisy to hear. I didn’t want them to know that you had almost gotten home with your pony. You grew ten feet tall today. I’m proud of you. I’d like to shake your hand.”

I shook hands with Papa for the first time in my life. It felt like all his strength came right up my arm and spread through my body.

F
or the first time in a long time, I slept all night without waking up. I was still asleep the next morning when Grandpa and Grandma drove up to our house.

That was a very busy morning around our place. Both Mama and Grandma were giving me orders at the same time. “Don’t forget that. Bring this. Hurry now, we don’t want to miss that train.” I never saw anything like it.

The last part was the worst. Mama, Daisy, and Grandma were all bawling at the same time. I didn’t think Mama would ever turn loose of Papa.

Daisy was bawling and kissing everything that got close to her. She kissed Papa four or five times. She tried to kiss me but I got away from her. She caught Rowdy and kissed him right between the eyes.

The last thing I put in the buckboard was Daisy’s old crutch. I cried a little when I saw them disappear down the road.

Papa and I took care of Grandpa’s store that day and I made myself sick—I ate so much candy. By late evening, I was the sickest boy in those Ozark hills. I was still sick when I went to bed that night.

The next morning while we were having breakfast, Papa said, “Now that Mama and Daisy are gone, things are going to be a
little different. You and I will have to take care of everything. If you can do the cooking and take care of things around the house, I’ll take care of the fields. How does that sound to you?”

“It sounds fine to me, Papa,” I said.

“Do you think you can do it?” Papa asked.

“Oh, sure, Papa,” I said. “I won’t have any trouble with the cooking. I’ve watched Mama do that a thousand times.”

Papa laughed. “I don’t know,” he said. “You may find there’s more to cooking than you think.”

“Naw, Papa,” I said. “I won’t have any trouble with it. Every time you come in from the field, I’ll have some food on the table just like Mama does.”

To have a little company, I propped the kitchen door open so Rowdy could come and go. This pleased him very much because only on special occasions was he allowed in the house. I figured that this was a very special occasion.

With Mama’s apron tied around me and humming a happy tune, I got started. The first thing I tried to cook was some beans. I got a pot and filled it about two thirds full with beans. I poured in a little water, dropped in a chunk of salt pork, and set it on the stove.

Then I peeled three potatoes and sliced them. I set a skillet on the stove, waited until it was hot enough to fry nails, and dropped the potatoes and a scoop of hog lard in it.

While the beans and potatoes were cooking, I figured that I’d make some flour gravy.

All this time, I was still humming that happy little tune.

It didn’t take long to find out that I knew absolutely nothing about cooking. I was setting the table when things started happening. First, it was the beans. They hadn’t been boiling very long when they started crawling out of the pot as if they were alive. In no time, I had beans all over the stove and all over the kitchen floor. Some even fell off the stove into Mama’s woodbox.

Then the potatoes went crazy. They started burning and smoking at the same time. Before I knew it, the house was full of smoke. I opened every door and window to let it out.

Rowdy got scared, ran outside, and crawled under the porch.

When I tried to pour the gravy out of the skillet into a bowl, it wouldn’t pour. It just plopped out like a pancake.

I had no trouble getting rid of my messes. Our chickens and Sloppy Ann, our hog, would eat anything.

I tried to get Rowdy to come back in the house so I’d have someone to talk to, but he wouldn’t do it. I threatened to whip him but it did no good.

When Papa came in from the field for his dinner, he said, “Boy, I’m hungry. What are we going to eat?”

“Papa,” I said, “I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook. Everything I put on the stove either boiled over or burned up. There must be more to this cooking than I thought there was.”

Papa laughed. “I was afraid of that,” he said, “but don’t let it bother you. We’ll make out all right. I’ll help you with the cooking.”

For dinner, we had cold cornbread that Mama had baked, sweet milk, honey, and butter—that was all.

We made out all right, but it wasn’t easy. Papa couldn’t cook any better than I could. I would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for Grandma. About every two or three days, I’d pay her a visit and she would fill me up.

The mail buggy made one trip from Tahlequah to Grandpa’s store each week. We never knew what day it would come. Each time the buggy came there were two letters from Mama: one for Papa and one for Grandma and Grandpa.

Papa and I would read Mama’s letters over and over.

Mama wasn’t very happy about staying in the big city. She told us how lonesome she was and how much she missed us. Daisy was getting along fine. They had operated on her leg and she had a cast
on it. The doctor told Mama that he felt sure the operation had been successful. If everything went as they thought it would, Daisy wouldn’t need her old crutch any more. They wouldn’t know for sure until they took the cast off.

I thought it would be fun with no one around but Papa and me. There was no one to give me orders or tell me what to do. But the fun didn’t last very long. I began to miss Mama and Daisy. The days got longer and longer, and the nights were almost unbearable.

By the end of the third week, it seemed as if a gloomy silence had settled all around our home. Everything seemed to have changed.

Our chickens had all but stopped laying. We were getting about half as many eggs as we had been. Sally Gooden had dropped off in her milk until she was barely wetting the bucket. One day I went to get a bucket of water and almost cried when I noticed that our well was going dry.

Papa tried to explain these changes by saying it was that time of year when everything around a farm changes. Summer was almost gone and fall was coming on. It happened every year, and it wasn’t anything to worry about.

The way I was feeling I wasn’t worrying about our farm. Right then I didn’t care what happened to it. I was lonesome. I wanted Mama and Daisy to come home.

Rowdy didn’t help at all. He had stopped following me around and didn’t have any more bounce to him than an Ozark flint rock. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t go prowling any more.

As the days passed, Papa started moping around as if he didn’t have any life left in him. Some nights he would sit in his rocker on the porch, and smoke his pipe until way in the night. It got so bad that sometimes he would go all day and not say one word to me.

It was worse around Grandpa’s store. He got so grumpy he couldn’t get along with himself, much less anyone else.

In the middle of the fourth week, we got a letter from Mama
that cheered us up for a few days. Mama said that the doctor had taken the cast off Daisy’s leg. The operation had been a success, and Daisy was learning to walk. She said that Daisy was walking all over the hospital.

After hearing this, Papa and I felt pretty good for a few days. Then that lonely feeling crept in on us again. It seemed to be ten times worse than it had been before.

Six, long miserable weeks went by. It got so still around our home, it gave me a scary feeling. I went out of my way to find things to do. I kept the weeds hoed out of Mama’s garden. I cleaned the barn. I swept the floor in our house so many times it was a wonder I didn’t wear out the floorboards.

I couldn’t forget the little mare. There was hardly a day went by that I didn’t think of her. It was the dreams that hurt worst of all. I would dream that I could hear her nickering but I couldn’t see her. When I would see her, I couldn’t put my hands on her. She was always just out of reach. In ghostly slow motion, I could see her running with mane and tail blowing in the breeze. Sometimes I would try so hard to catch her but I never could quite make it. Oh, I’d get close—so close that I could almost touch her with my hand, and then I’d wake up.

It hurt—oh, how it hurt.

One day about the middle of the afternoon, I took a broom and a bucket of water and walked up to Daisy’s playhouse. I gave it a good sweeping and I watered all of her flowers. I noticed that the wind and rain had unwrapped some of the tinfoil from the grapevine cross.

I was rewrapping the crossarm of the cross when I thought of the Old Man of the Mountains. With tears in my eyes, I knelt in front of the cross and asked him to help me.

“Old Man of the Mountains,” I said, “I know you’re here somewhere. Daisy says that you’re always around. She says that you see and hear everything that goes on in these hills. I hope
you hear me today. Please send Mama and Daisy home. I miss them so much. I don’t think I can stand it any more. If you do this one thing for me, I promise to be good for as long as I live.”

The Old Man of the Mountains must have decided that I did need help. The very next day something wonderful happened.

Papa and I were sitting on the porch of our home in the twilight of evening. Rowdy was lying at my side. Thousands of lightning bugs had just started their flickering dance. They looked like tiny flashlights going on and off, on and off.

In one of the big red oaks, a small screech owl started his eerie twitter. Across the river at the Mose Hobb’s farm, an old milk cow was mooing and an old hound was baying in his deep voice. Down in the river bottoms, an old hooty owl started singing his hoot-owl song to the silent night.

I saw when Rowdy raised his head, pricked up his ears, and looked down the road. “Papa,” I said, “somebody’s coming.”

Papa stirred in his chair and said, “What makes you think someone’s coming? I don’t hear anything.”

“I don’t either, Papa,” I said, “but Rowdy does.”

Papa looked at Rowdy. “I believe he does hear something,” he said.

Then we heard the jingling of harnesses and the fast clopping of horses’ hoofs.

Papa got up from his chair. He said, “I wonder who it could be this late in the evening.”

It was Grandpa. In a cloud of dust, his buckboard pulled up in front of our home. Grandpa started talking as he got out of it.

“I’ve been trying to get down here ever since the mailman came,” he said, “but I couldn’t get away from the store. I never saw so many people.”

He came over and handed Papa a letter. “They’re coming in tomorrow,” he said. “On the noon train. That’s what she said in our letter.”

Papa never said a word. He turned and walked into the house. Grandpa and I followed him.

Papa opened the letter. In the glow of our coal-oil lamp, he started reading it out loud.

The letter was short. Mama said that she and Daisy would be on the noon train and wanted us to meet them. She said there were a lot of things she wanted to tell us but it would be better to wait and let us see for ourselves.

Grandpa said, “If you’re busy with your farm work, I’ll be glad to go in and pick them up.”

“No, we’ll go in,” Papa said. “I think it would do us good to get away from here for a day.”

I knew that I was going to bawl so I went to my room and lay down on the bed. With my face buried in a pillow, I said, “Thanks, Old Man of the Mountains. Thank you very much, and I’ll keep my promise.”

I didn’t sleep very well that night. I kept waking up. Papa must not have slept at all. Every time I woke up, I could hear him stirring around in the house.

The next morning, Papa was up before daylight. He had opened the door and let Rowdy in the house.

Rowdy came flying into my room and jumped right up in the middle of my bed. I tried hiding under the covers but it did no good. With his paws, Rowdy dug the quilts off me and started licking my face.

I put my arms around him and said, “Boy, you’d better be glad that Mama’s not here. She’d wear the broom out on you.”

In the kitchen, Papa was chuckling as he built a fire in the cook stove.

All the time Papa and I were doing the chores that morning, Rowdy stayed so close to me I could hardly walk. Several times I almost stepped on him. Even while we were eating breakfast, he sat where he could look right in my face. He wiggled and he twisted.
He whimpered and he whined. His old tail was going in all directions.

Papa laughed and said, “What’s the matter with that old hound? He’s sure acting funny.”

“He knows we’re going someplace,” I said, “and he’s begging me to let him go with us.”

Papa said, “Why, we’ll have to take him. We couldn’t leave him here all alone. He’d die a thousand deaths. Just be sure that we have a rope with us.”

“Watch this, Papa!” I said.

Looking at Rowdy, I said, “It’s all right, boy. You can go with us.”

Rowdy was so pleased he had a running fit. He bounded into the front room, made a U-turn, and came flying back through the kitchen and out the door. He ran all the way around the house and came back in. He sat down, raised his old head, and bawled.

I thought everything in the house would come down.

Papa and I laughed and laughed.

That was the first good laugh we had had since Mama and Daisy had gone away.

While I was doing the dishes, Papa hitched our mules to the wagon. Both of us put on clean overalls and shirts. I even went out to the watering trough and washed my feet a little—but not very much.