Ruby & Roland Read online

  Later, carrying a kerosene lamp, Emma showed me to my small room under the eaves on the third floor, the climb speaking to her endurance after a hard day. My room was separated from another bedroom by a long storage closet. Nodding at the door down the hallway, she said, “Men sleep there. If they bother, you let me know.” Setting her lamp on a bureau, she opened the dormer window overlooking the front yard and Cemetery Road. “I expect they won’t. They’re pretty good men. But you never know, do you, what men’ll get up to?” She lit the lamp on the bedside table. “Better get to sleep real quick. Morning comes early.”

  Someone had filled a pitcher beside the basin on the bureau, so I undressed and sponged off before pulling on the batiste gown Frau Oster had given me. Before anything else, though, I knelt and opened the trunk, which stood beneath a row of hooks high on the wall. With delicacy, I lifted out the china tea set, a piece at a time. Near the window facing the road sat a wooden box, maybe meant as a seat, but I laid out the tea set on it, just so, as I always did. Now the room held some exhalation of Serena.

  The painting I hung by its wire from one of the hooks. Though the cowherd lay with his arms folded behind his head, seeming to study the moving water of the stream, sometimes I felt that from the corner of his eye he studied me as well.

  I hung my dress and undergarments on the hooks, as there was no wardrobe, then slipped a book from my carpetbag. Before settling down to read, I crouched by the window, listening to the night, the frogs and crickets, the trees and windmill. The clacking of the windmill was nearly incessant. It would grow so familiar that I would stop hearing it.

  I lay down with Wuthering Heights, part of my legacy from Serena’s library. The rest of the books were still in the trunk. Later, I would pile a few on the lower shelf of the bedside table as I had done at the Osters’. The Osters. They’d soon be gone from Salisbury and from my life, nearly as vanished as Serena and Denton.

  But now I opened the book to the page where I’d left the story. Nursed by the Lintons after their dog had attacked her, Cathy was home again. Heathcliff, mistreated and banished by Earnshaw at Christmas, was angrier than he’d ever been, and swearing vengeance. Nothing Cathy said could soothe him. They were both orphans and had always clung to each other, but Cathy was of the family, whereas Heathcliff was a mongrel, a child of unknown origin, despised by the Earnshaws.

  Some in this world might label me a mongrel, but I had known my parents, dear Denton and Serena, and the book in my hands was proof of it.

  For the remainder of that week, every minute was crammed with chores, and it remains a whirling blur. Besides gathering eggs, weeding in the garden, and helping Emma with the three main meals, I carried sandwiches, cool water, and slices of melon down to the threshing field mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

  During the all-too-brief window for threshing, the men worked at least fourteen-hour days, six days a week, and sometimes Sunday after church as well if the weather promised fair. One never knew when rain might gather in black, pendulous clouds above South Dakota and come sweeping over the lip of the prairie. Nowhere else and never since have I seen men or women work as they did during those late summer days.

  “Next week, when the extra help is gone, I’ll teach you to milk a cow,” Emma told me as the threshing began to wind down.

  Out of the blur, people’s names began attaching themselves to faces. The hired man from the farm directly across Cemetery Road was Moses Good, the farmer Roland Allen, his wife Dora. Though the wives of other farmers came with potato salads and pies during the threshing, we did not see Dora, who had a month-old baby girl at home. Roland was notable among the men for his beauty. Emma said that six years ago, when he was seventeen and had taken over the farm from a homesteading uncle, Roland had been the object of sport among the men on account of his looks.

  “They called him Adonis Allen.” She paused from dredging steaks in seasoned flour. “Men don’t quite trust a fellow who’s that good looking. They’re always waiting for some shoe to drop.” A moment later it seemed to occur to her that a sheltered fifteen-year-old might not understand, and she turned to look at me.

  “I think I know what you mean,” I said. “I read a lot.” I laid a glass at each place on the table. “And Serena told me about Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.”

  She did not indicate whether she knew of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, but inquired, “Serena?”

  “My mother.”

  “You called her by her first name?” Her tone was wondering.

  At suppertime, I studied Roland Allen as much as I could without appearing to. Beneath the chaff dust, there was no question that he was beautiful, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. The summer sun had bleached his blond hair nearly white, and his brows were white against skin tanned golden, dark lashes framed eyes the intense blue of bachelor’s buttons. Ringing each iris was a thin black line which only heightened their intensity.

  I would not ordinarily stare at a man, and I soon grew self-conscious and embarrassed to be doing just that. At last I drew myself away to fetch the pitcher of buttermilk from the icebox. There is something about extreme beauty that is like a terrible accident—from which, people say, they cannot look away.

  Lying in bed, the lamp still burning, I gazed at the picture of Serena and Denton. Well, darlings, here I am. On a farm now. The Schoonovers are good people. Hardworking. Oh my, yes, hardworking. But the work does them proud. They thrive on it, though it wears them down to their essentials. Remember, Serena, you used to say that about teaching. “It’s wearing me down to my essentials, but I love it.”

  Ah, Serena. Where are you now, you and Denton? Lying back on wicker chaises on a wide green lawn beneath spreading trees? Or perhaps you’ve drifted on a cloud across the world to far Xanadu, where Kubla Khan “a stately pleasure dome” did build? More than two years have passed since you left, but some of your time is spent with me here in this small third-floor room. I know.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dear Professor Cromwell,

  Threshing is behind us here on the Schoonover farm and today, as promised, Emma taught me how to milk a cow. When one gazes at cows from a little distance, they don’t look so very imposing. Gentle creatures, one would say, who like to lie about and chew their cud. But when one is sitting on a small stool with one’s head pressed against their enormous sides, the perspective is quite different.

  For one thing, their cruel-looking hooves are in close proximity, and their huge heads, even in stanchions, are likely to swivel to the side in order to shoot one an evil eye if one’s inexpert milking technique annoys them. Add to this, the unexpected slap across the face from a none-too-hygienic tail or the sudden, electrical quiver pulsing through their skin when they thrust off a blowfly. Well, one’s dreamy imaginings regarding bovines soon dissipate. It’s a blessing that the Schoonovers keep only eight milk cows and a prize bull whose name is Harold for reasons I may one day guess.

  However, having said all this, Professor, I do look forward to perfecting my milking technique.

  As the first frost approached, Emma and I stripped the garden of produce. What we didn’t consume in daily meals, we preserved. I had never canned before. From a cupboard on the screened porch, we gathered glass jars, dozens and dozens of them, carrying them into the kitchen where we scrubbed them with hot water and soap, then rinsed them and lowered them into two huge galvanized tubs filled with boiling water. When the jars were sterilized, we lifted them out with calipers, drained them, and set them on the table mouths up, waiting to be fed.

  We had prepared whatever vegetable we were canning that day, washing the beans or corn or tomatoes and cutting them into appropriate-size pieces. Now we stuffed them into jars and filled the jars with boiling water and sometimes herbs.

  The biggest mess was making mincemeat with the meat grinder, a complicated tool that fastened onto the kitchen table and had to be washed meticulously afterward, “If you don’t want to poison a whole family at a meal. Nasty stuff
, meat can be, if you’re not careful.”

  Of the canned goods in general, Emma told me, “If you don’t have everything pure as an angel’s kiss, they’ll go bad. And sometimes they explode, and you’ve got an ugly corruption to clean up.”

  When I set the table we usually included a pickle of some variety. At the grocer’s back in Illinois, dill pickles came in a barrel, and Serena or Denton bought a scoop at a time and kept them in a covered dish in the icebox. Here, we pickled small onions, melon rinds, cucumbers, beets, and crab apples, and they appeared on the table in the jars in which we’d pickled them.

  Large onions, potatoes, carrots, and, eventually, the bigger apples, went into the storm cellar along with squash and pumpkins. With raspberries, strawberries, and ground cherries, we made jam in season. Some apples became apple butter; some, sauce.

  By first snowfall, Emma and I each had a cyst on our wrist the size of a large marble, partly from scrubbing and cutting and stuffing, but mostly from screwing the jar lids closed. Tightly, tightly. Of the cysts, which were new to me, Emma said, “Gone by spring, you’ll see.”

  When the jars of vegetables and fruit were ready, we carried most of them down to shelves lining the cobwebby, windowless space beneath the house, accessible from a door in the kitchen beside the icebox. I often brought up jars from this fruit cellar but never grew accustomed to the dark eeriness of the place.

  One day, Emma said, “We’ll load some of the canning in the wagon and haul it across the road to the Allens’. Their baby died.”

  “She died? Why?”

  Lifting her shoulders in both bewilderment and resignation, Emma sighed. “Who knows? Took a cold, maybe. Babies die. Some come into the world strong. Some don’t.” She turned to the sink, pumped water into a glass and drank it. “I lost three. All of ’em boys.”

  So we packed bushel baskets with fruits, vegetables, jams, and sauces, plus chickens, ducks, and venison, using old towels to cushion the jars. Afterward, we harnessed up one of the horses to the wagon and carried our bounty down the long drive and across the road.

  Roland answered the back door, helping us carry the baskets into the house and empty them onto the old kitchen table. In the sunlight, our jars of many colors shone like giant jewels.

  Roland insisted that we sit while he made coffee. Emma had come prepared and drew from her huge apron pockets ginger cookies wrapped in rough cloth napkins, cookies she and I had baked that morning.

  While the coffee brewed in a chipped gray and white enamel pot, Roland left us to call up the stairs to Dora. Waiting a bit, he called again. Receiving no answer, he returned to the kitchen, shaking his head. “She’s a heavy sleeper.”

  “Don’t wake her,” Emma said. “We won’t be long.”

  Even in overalls and an old flannel shirt gray with wear at the collar and cuffs, Roland and his intense blue eyes were a sight to inspire an artist. Contemplating him, I felt those eyes were full of questions and unanswered needs.

  “So how is Dora getting on?” Emma asked.

  Roland shrugged. “All right, I guess. She doesn’t come down much. I expect you could figure that, what with the state of the kitchen.” He gave the littered counter and greasy stove an unhappy glance, then stirred cream into his coffee and tossed the spoon down with impatience.

  “It’s hard,” Emma said. “It takes time. More time for some than others. Dora’s delicate. Always was.”

  Not quite old enough to understand nor quite familiar enough with these people, I couldn’t be sure what Emma meant. Perhaps nothing. But tonight in bed, I would think about Roland and this little scene. Between Emma and Roland there existed a special bond, almost parental.

  As we were leaving, he thanked us for the food and pressed my hand. “You’re good women,” he said. “Maybe someday I can return your kindness.” Descending the steps, I put my hand to my cheek and found unexpected heat in the palm where Roland had touched it.

  Driving the wagon back across the road, Emma said, “He married a town girl. Pretty but not used to farm work, nor to losing babies, if a person’s ever used to that. Don’t know where it’ll end.”

  In my room that night, I took down the painting of the cowherd and told the blond lad that his name was now Roland.

  • • •

  With harvest behind us, the men went to work on the machinery—the plow, the harrow, the spreader—sharpening, repairing, painting, oiling, and otherwise getting everything in order for spring. Horse gear was cared for, oiled or varnished. The buggy and wagon the same. Before really cold weather came, the three men worked on the buildings where previous seasons of harsh weather had taken a toll.

  I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the tasks Henry and “the boys” dealt with, side by side. The appellation amused me. Shy Dennis, at eighteen, might qualify as a “boy,” but I was pretty sure that Jake was over fifty, his face as weathered, gray, and seamed as an untreated fence post. In many ways, they were like father and son.

  However, Emma told me, “Dennis’s pa, Mr. Cansler, owns the newspaper over in St. Bridget.”

  “What’s Dennis doing on the farm?”

  “Growing up. Been with us two years. Mr. Cansler told Henry Dennis needed ‘seasoning’ and ‘grit.’ Come next fall and he’ll head off to college. He’s a good boy.” She handed a spool of black thread and a packet of needles to the clerk in Lundeen’s Dry Goods. “I think old man Cansler is a tough nut. Jake’s been good for Dennis.”

  Emma and I had driven the buggy to town, as we always did on Saturdays; Dennis, Jake, and Henry took the wagon. Their tasks and destinations were different than ours. And, after a stop at Reagan’s Saloon and Billiards at the end of the day, they would be late returning to the farm.

  I can’t speak for Emma, but I was always fluttery in my chest and half dizzy in my head on our Saturday trips to town. My breath was short and unreliable as I wandered the aisles of the dry goods store feeling grown-up and a little worldly. After all, I had lived in three different places. Didn’t that give me some claim to worldliness? I had rarely shopped with Serena and Denton, however, and never with the Osters, so there were limits to my sophistication.

  Standing at the counter in Lundeen’s, I gazed around, soaking up the bounty of merchandise, the smells of new cloth and leather, and the feeling of goodwill that Saturday inspired in clerks and customers alike. Lundeen’s was everything a dry goods store should be. The varnished floors shone; the counters, tables, and shelves were oak and polished; goods were carefully sorted and neatly piled. Courteous and knowledgeable, the clerks were overseen by the younger Mr. Lundeen, a handsome and well-mannered gentleman of thirty-five or so.

  But no words can do full justice to Saturday in town, especially in the warm months, when folks strolled unhurried in the endless evening, promenading up and down Main Street, stopping to trade gossip with someone sitting on a wagon seat or in a buggy. Piano music drifted out the open doors of Reagan’s, and you moved along the wooden walk as if in the pages of a novel.

  Of course, before the promenading, there were purchases to be made: flour, sugar, thread, dried beans, crackers, maybe fabric or shoes or a new hammer. On one such trip, Emma bought me two cotton dresses, a grass-green with tiny rosebuds and a blue with white daisies. I was filling out, she said, and the sleeves on my old dresses were halfway to my elbows.

  Many a farm wife sewed what she or her hired girl needed, but Emma hated the treadle machine. She didn’t mind mending, she said, but “making that treadle go with my feet while my hands are tending to the cloth, well, I end up running the needle through my fingers nearly every time.”

  It was early November now but unseasonably warm. Though we did wear coats (mine would no longer button across my bosom, so Emma had given me an old one of hers), we ambled along Main Street in the lowering evening like ladies of nobility, pausing in front of the pharmacy to study windows where boxes of Lady Worden’s Female Pills and bottles of White Lily Face Wash nudged Dr. Barker’s Blood Builde
r.

  As we stood commenting, the door to the pharmacy opened and Roland emerged carrying a large bag and looking startled to see us. Hefting the bag in a kind of greeting, he explained, “For Dora. Something new, called Vin Vitae, the wine of life.”

  “What’s it do?” Emma asked, her head cocked to one side.

  Roland removed a bottle, reading from the label. “‘A tonic stimulant for the tired, weak, and sick.’ Worth a try.” Slipping the bottle back into the bag, he glanced from one of us to the other, and Emma nodded. “Well, it’s getting dark,” he said, thanking us once again for the canned food, then hurrying away.

  Gazing after him, Emma shook her head.

  Later, my toes would curl in an ecstasy of wonder and happiness as I recalled our meeting outside the pharmacy.

  The next afternoon, after church and the midday meal, I told Emma, “I’m going to walk down to the lake. Pretty soon, it’ll be too cold.”

  “There’s still a few hunters looking for geese and ducks, so you be careful. Don’t get your head blown off. Tomorrow’s wash day and I don’t fancy doin’ it by myself.” She laughed.

  Sioux Woman Lake was only a mile west on Cemetery Road, but our days were so full, we seldom saw it. In October we did hear guns when the hunters descended, seemingly from everywhere, to bring down the birds as they migrated. Even Henry and the boys went out when they could spare an hour or two. For several days we cooked as many as we could eat, then Emma and I canned the rest.

  Around me as I strolled, the autumnal death of leaf and stalk had muted the landscape to pastels in smoky hues. Ahead, the western sky was lowering, the way it sometimes did in winter, plunging till it hugged the earth, hushing all sound. The air smelled of bonfires, from the town and the country, the last of the autumn cleanup before snow covered one’s sloth.

  Emma and I had cleaned up the yard and garden in October, burning leaves and refuse in a big steel drum. Oh, the heavenly perfume of good clean smoke wafting up to one’s bedroom at night when the sky was ebon and the stars icy. Then, one could believe in God. Or something.