Fields of Home (26 page)

29

Annie Is Woman of the House

S
UNDAY
morning I slept until after sunrise, and there was no sound from Grandfather’s room when I went out to do the chores. I’d fed and watered the horses and the bull, slopped the hogs, and was nearly done milking when I heard a familiar voice outside the big barn doors. “Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder the both of you ain’t starved to death! No wonder you’re sick! If you can’t find Millie, why in tunket ain’t you got another housekeeper?”

I wanted to run right out there, but I didn’t. The bull picked just that time to bellow, so I couldn’t hear what Grandfather said, and a couple of minutes later, he and Uncle Levi came into the tie-up.

“Hi, Uncle Levi,” I called when I heard the tie-up door bang. “I was hoping you’d come today.”

“Cussed good thing I did come,” he called back. “Where be you, Ralph? Stand up so’s I can see if there’s anything left of you but skin and bones. It’s a God’s wonder . . . Thomas, how long since this boy’s had a square meal of victuals?”

Grandfather didn’t answer right away, so I said, “Oh, we’re getting along all right. Annie Littlehale came up and showed me how to bake biscuit and johnnycake. She made us pies and a layer cake, and baked a pot of beans.”

“Them two cold biscuits I seen in the pantry a sample?”

“Well, not a very good one,” I told him. “They came out better when Annie was right here to tell me what to do.”

“What you having for breakfast? Didn’t see nothing but a pot of burnt oatmeal.”

Before I could answer, Grandfather shouted, “I and Ralphie’s a-getting on all right. You don’t need to be coming down here a-telling us what we’ll eat. If you don’t like . . . ”

I didn’t want Grandfather to get all excited and say something to make Uncle Levi go right back to Boston, so I hollered, “How did you get here so early, Uncle Levi? I thought there wasn’t any train before quarter of twelve.”

“Come down to Brunswick on the Bangor sleeper, and got fetched over in an automobile. Sound of Thomas telegraph, I calc’lated he was on his deathbed. About all ails him, he ain’t et. It’s a God’s wonder you ain’t in your graves, the both of you.”

“We had a tarnal great pot of beans,” Grandfather shouted. “Don’t nobody starve whenst they got pork and potatoes and beans.”

I tried to stop the row by shouting to Uncle Levi, “Did you see the new manure spreader, Uncle Levi?”

“No, I didn’t!” Uncle Levi said. “I seen a cussed old wore-out one. Thomas, it’s a . . . ”

“I’ll bet you can fix it,” I hurried to say.

“Calc’late ’twould take a month of Sundays, and I got to be back in Boston come Friday morning. Here, give me one them pails of milk. I’ll fetch it to the house and change my clothes. Went to see your mother and the children last night. They’re making out all right. She sent you down a batch of doughnuts.”

With Grandfather and Uncle Levi both being a little edgy, I wanted to be where I could break in if they started to quarrel, so I finished the chores as fast as I could go. Uncle Levi was still upstairs when I went to the house. There were two big paper bags and a cardboard box on the kitchen table, and Grandfather was slicing salt pork. He still had his hat on and was grumbling more to himself than to me, “Don’t know what in tarnation there is ’bout living off to Boston that makes Levi so finicky ’bout his victuals. Pork and potatoes and beans was good enough for him whenst he was a boy to home . . . and pie. Ralphie, you cal’late you could whack us up a nice good johnnycake? I got a good roaring fire a-going and the tea’s on to boil. I’ll run down cellar and fetch you up some sour milk.”

I fussed around as long as I could while I was washing my face and hands, and hoped Grandfather would go into his room or outdoors. I’d made two johnnycakes since Annie had showed me how, but both times I’d used four eggs and the heaviest sour cream I could find. I was sure I could make another good one the same way, but I was worried about what it would be like without either cream or eggs.

Grandfather brought me a pan of clabber with every bit of the cream skimmed off, and then he stood and watched me. I’d just put the salt and soda into the corn meal and flour, and was sifting them when Uncle Levi came downstairs. “Gorry sakes, Levi,” Grandfather sang out, “you ought to see the nice good victuals Ralphie can make. By fire, he whacked up the nicest johnnycake t’other day ever I et. He’s a-making one of ’em right now.”

With both Grandfather and Uncle Levi watching me, I forgot what Annie had said about putting pork fat into the johnnycake if I didn’t use cream, so I just poured in some sour milk and began to stir. The batter didn’t act right. It stuck till the spoon was bigger than my fist, and it plastered thick around the sides of the bowl. Instead of being reddish, it was whitish-yellow. That made me remember the molasses. I poured a little in, but it only made the mess stickier. While I was putting in a little more sour milk, Uncle Levi said, “Ain’t you forgot the eggs?”

“Don’t need no eggs in johnnycake!” Grandfather snapped.

“With all the hens ’round here, Thomas, it’s a G . . . ”

I didn’t let him get any further. I dropped the spoon, and said, “I guess I’ve forgotten how Annie showed me to do it. This dough doesn’t feel right.”

Uncle Levi looked over Grandfather’s shoulder and winked at me. Then he said, “Fetched you down a little fruit, but the meat market at Brunswick wa’n’t open. Calc’late we’ll have to sacrifice a hen after breakfast.”

Grandfather swung his head around, and grumbled, “Hens is all a-laying good, and eggs is fetching eighteen cents. Plenty pork in the barrel.”

“Fetched you some blood oranges, Thomas. Want one afore breakfast?” was all Uncle Levi said.

“Gorry sakes! Gorry sakes! Believe I would! Believe I would,” Grandfather said, and reached for one of the big bags on the table. “Great thunderation, Levi! Where in tarnation did ever you find oranges the likes of them? Must weigh tarnal nigh onto a pound apiece.”

Grandfather still had his hand down inside the bag, and was peeking over the edge of it. “Them ain’t oranges,” Uncle Levi told him. “Them’s grapefruits. Comes from Florida.”

“Grapefruits!” Grandfather said, as he took one out. “What in tarnation kind of grapes is they that grows so big? Must take a tarnal stout vine to hold ’em up. More like punkin fruits than grapefruits! Gorry sakes! Cal’late a vine like that must need a powerful lot of dressing. Great thunderation! Cluster of ’em’s prob’ly bigger’n a weanling calf.”

“Don’t grow on vines; grow on trees, like apples,” Uncle Levi told him. “Hear tell a man out in California invented ’em. Calc’late it’s a cross ’twixt a lemon and an orange.”

Grandfather was turning the grapefruit in his hands. He smelled it, and asked, “Why don’t they call ’em lemonges ’stead of grapefruits if they be crossbred?”

“Same reason they don’t call mules donkosses,” Uncle Levi said. “Some folks thinks they tastes like grapes. Why don’t you try one? Here, Ralph! Fetched some red bananas, too. Like ’em?”

When Uncle Levi emptied the bags onto the table, it looked as though he’d bought out a whole fruit store. There were red and yellow bananas, grapefruit, tangerines, two or three different kinds of oranges; a big bar of pressed figs, a lump of dates nearly as big as my head, and a bag of light green grapes with ground cork around them. I’d never seen so much or so many kinds of fruit in one house in my life. “There!” Uncle Levi told me, as he folded the paper bags. “Ought to be bellyaches enough there to last you a week. Dip right in! Red bananas goes a cussed sight better for breakfast than burnt oatmeal.”

Grandfather looked the table over, and grumbled, “Wastin’! Wastin’! Cal’late it cost the worth of a barrel of flour.” But, as I peeled my first red banana, he opened his jackknife, wiped the blade on the leg of his pants, and began peeling the grapefruit as if it were a potato. The knife was dull, and white pith hung on the blade. Grandfather scraped it off with his thumbnail, and popped it into his mouth. His eyebrows raised as he pinched it a few times between his gums. Then he blew it out, shut his eyes tight, and howled, “Gorry sakes a-body! Levi, them ain’t fitting to eat! Grapefruits! Gorry sakes! Bitterer’n puckerberry! ’Tain’t fit victuals for hogs!”

Uncle Levi showed Grandfather how to skin all the white pulp off the grapefruit before he ate it. He was still skinning when Uncle Levi started for the back door, and motioned to me. “Bet you ain’t had a square meal of victuals since you come back,” was the first thing he said when we were outside. “Had to get Thomas a-going on that grapefruit so’s we could knock over a hen. Did ever I show you how to pick out the ones that ain’t laying?”

I just shook my head, and he said, “Fetch me a handful of cracked corn, if you’ve a mind to.”

When I came back with the corn, Uncle Levi was standing in the middle of the dooryard with a long beanpole in one hand. “There, stand right behind me,” he said when I poured the corn into his hand. Then, he called, “Biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy,” and tossed the corn in a half circle in front of him. Inside of two minutes, nearly every hen on the place was picking up corn as fast as she could bob her head. Uncle Levi crouched, watching them like a fox, and holding the pole like a baseball bat. When the whole flock was pecking away with their tails pointed up, he let out a quick, “Yipe,” and swung the pole. It broke the necks of the first three hens that poked their heads up. “Go get ’em, Ralph!” he told me. “Chop their heads off afore the blood sets! I’ll fetch the teakettle.”

I was a little puzzled, and before I went to pick up the hens, I asked, “How do you know those are the ones that aren’t laying?”

“Well, if they ain’t they ought to be, elseways they’d keep on pecking corn to make eggs out of,” he said. Then he stood the pole back against the woodshed and went for the teakettle.

“There!” Uncle Levi said, when he came back and poured the hot water into the scalding pail. “Douse ’em good, so’s they’ll pick easy. Calc’late I got Thomas took care of for a spell. Fetched him down the funny pictures out of the Boston paper. Spare his feelings not to see these hens till they’re ready for the pot.”

I’d only picked the back and one wing of my first hen, when Uncle Levi asked, “What happened to the johnnycake?”

“I must have forgotten to put something in it,” I said.

“Calc’lated so. Eggs, wa’n’t it? And maybe butter?”

“Maybe I didn’t put in enough molasses,” I told him.

“That ain’t no good, Ralph. You know it well’s I do. What did you put in when it come out so good?”

I’d always felt sneaky when I was using eggs and cream in the johnnycakes, and I didn’t want to tell Uncle Levi about it, so I said, “Annie Littlehale helped me with the one that came out best.”

“Mmmhmmm. What did Annie put in?”

“She didn’t put in anything; she just told me how to do things as I went along.”

“How many eggs did she tell you to put in?”

I picked the other wing, but I couldn’t think of any way to get around Uncle Levi’s question, so I said, “Three or four.”

“Good girl! Got some sense in her head,” Uncle Levi said. “How much butter?”

“None. We didn’t have any.”

“What did you use for shortening; salt-pork fat?”

“No, sir,” I said. “We didn’t use any fat.”

“Must have, if ’twas any good. What else did you put in?”

Uncle Levi seemed to know a lot more about johnnycake than I did, and I was sure I couldn’t fool him, so I said, “A cup of sour cream.”

“That’s more like it. Calc’late you could get Annie to come cook us some victuals if I was to get Thomas out of the way?”

“Grandfather won’t let her,” I said.

“Catch her using a couple of eggs?”

“He found some shells in the swill pail.”

“Careless, wa’n’t you? What did he have to say?”

“He said she was wasting, and never to let him catch her messing around with the cooking any more.”

“Don’t calc’late on him a-catching her. Calc’late to keep him off somewheres till sundown. You fetch her and I’ll look after Thomas. Don’t aim to go on a ration of salt pork and last year’s potatoes.”

While I finished picking the last hen, Uncle Levi brought a piece of board and began cleaning the first two we’d picked. Both of them were full of unlaid eggs. “Foolish virgins,” he mumbled, as he cut the little eggs out carefully and put them aside, “Should a-kept their minds on their victuals and they’d a-kept their necks out of trouble. Here, let’s see if there’s eggs in that one.”

There were. When Uncle Levi had them all taken out and put with the others, he passed me the piece of board, and said, “Go throw ’em in the hogs’ trough, Ralph. I’ll put the rest of these insides in a pail so’s Thomas can look ’em over when I ain’t around. Got to keep him thinking my system of picking out hens is good. ’Tain’t what he loses hurts Thomas; it’s what he knows about. Eggs and cream in the victuals is good for him; he needs ’em. You, too. Did ever you notice how quick a flock of hens will gobble up eggshells if you crumble ’em and heave ’em out a window?”

I nodded.

“Calc’late Annie might come up if you was to ask her? Might be she’d like red bananas.”

I nodded again, and Uncle Levi winked at me.

Things worked out just right for me to ask Annie to come up and help me cook. Right after we’d finished dressing the hens, Uncle Levi began asking Grandfather about this or that neighbor. “By hub,” he said, after a while, “ain’t seen some of them folks since the spring of the late freeze. Don’t calc’late old Aunt Lucy Stevens ever et a blood orange or a red banana. How ’bout us doing a little visiting today, Thomas? Why don’t you take Aunt Lucy two, three of them grapefruits? Ralph could mind the place and maybe whack up some victuals while we’re gone. Ever you make dumplings, Ralph?”

“No,” I said, “but aren’t they about like biscuits?”

“They be! They be!” Grandfather chirped. “Just spoon ’em in atop the soup whenst the hen’s done. Levi, did ever you see the suit of clo’se I bought me whenst I went off to encampment? Made a powerful good trade on it.”

“Seen it when you was up to Boston,” Uncle Levi said. “Don’t pinch you no place, does it?”

“Powerful good fitting suit of clo’se; plenty of room for shrinking, case I get catched in the rain.” Grandfather stood for at least two minutes just looking at a knot in the kitchen floor. Then, without looking up, he asked, “Levi, what in thunder you cal’late they done with all the dirt?”