Hattie Big Sky (19 page)

I brewed myself a cup of tea. Mr. Whiskers must've sensed how low I was feeling. He hopped up in my lap, purring his comfort and encouragement.

“There's a way.” I ran over the numbers one more time.

“Besides Traft.” I scratched Mr. Whiskers behind the ears. I prayed. I quilted. And prayed some more. No answer came.

As much as I wanted to throw myself a pity party, I couldn't. I did my chores—tried to revive my sad little garden, cleaned the chicken coop, put a pot of beans on to simmer for supper. Mucking out the barn, I saw Uncle Chester's chest. I put down the pitchfork and knelt in front of it, stroking the initials on the front. I leaned over, resting my cheek on the top of the chest, trying to draw comfort from it. Uncle Chester had believed in me. I'd believed in myself.

“I need to know what to do.” I fiddled with the latches. “It'd break my heart—and yours—to sell out to Traft.” Wiping my eyes, I sat up and opened the trunk. Maybe I'd missed something the first time I'd gone through it. Maybe there was a stash of money in the linings for a time like this. Hadn't he called himself a scoundrel? Didn't scoundrels usually have ill-gotten gains lying around somewhere?

This time I carefully inspected every inch of that chest. I took each item out, one by one, and set it next to me. When everything was out, I felt the lining, hoping to brush a secret trigger as I probed.

There were no secret compartments, no secret stashes, to be found.

It had been foolish even to hope, but desperation will make you believe almost anything. Carefully I replaced the contents in the trunk. As I set an old copy of
The Last of the Mohicans
back inside, I noticed something edged out, beyond the pages. I flipped the book open.

“Oh!” I sat back on my haunches and stared into the photo in my hands. It was of my mother and my father. Mother held a baby in her lap—me. Another man stood back of Mother. I turned the photo over for an explanation.
Me, Katherine, and Raymond with baby Hattie, January 1902.
I stared into the face of that three-month-old infant. So sweet. So happy. So hopeful.

Then I gazed into the faces of my parents. I could almost hear my mother singing to me and feel the tickle of my father's beard against my cheek. I pressed my lips to the picture and held it there for several seconds.

Then I looked at the other man. I knew, from the tight and slanted script on the back, who it was. Uncle Chester.

I studied his face. Was there any hint of disappointment there? Blame? All I could see was a warm and encouraging smile. Maybe even an understanding smile. I carefully tucked the photograph back in the book. The remaining items were returned to the trunk. I closed it up and did the latches.

“Thank you, Uncle Chester,” I whispered. Finding that photo today, on my lowest of days, was another one of Uncle Chester's gifts.

I only wish I knew what it meant.

         
CHAPTER 20         

SEPTEMBER
1918

THE ARLINGTON NEWS

Honyocker's Homily ~ Matters of Age

So much fuss about age! Men can enlist in the service at eighteen but cannot vote until age twenty-one. Women are thought old maids at twenty-four. My time on the prairie has shown me that age has very little to do with one's mental acuity or physical ability. My “old hen” neighbor—her own label for herself—is sought after like a debutante at a grand ball for her horse-training skills. Rooster Jim claims to be “near to sixty” and he puts in days that would send a younger man straight to his bed. And the youngsters! Twelve-year-old girls drive wagons, and sixteen-year-old boys are left in charge of farms while their fathers go east for work. I myself have been under the able tutelage of a boy just turned nine; without Chase's wisdom, I might not have made it through even my first day as a honyocker. It seems unfair not to give credit where credit is due simply because one lacks a certain number of candles on one's birthday cake.

Every woman in the county—in the country—probably spent the same sleepless night I did on September 11. I finally gave up, got up, and made coffee. Too early even to do my chores, I drank the coffee black, sitting on my steps, watching the sky blush the palest pink.

In a few hours, at 7 a.m., Registration Day would start, the third of the war. President Wilson was calling for thirteen million men, ages eighteen to forty-five, to enroll. “Let's Finish What We Have Begun,” trumpeted the
Herald.
I sipped my coffee and thought about Mabel Ren. Elmer had already registered; would he be drafted, leaving her all alone with those six kids and that big farm? At least their crops were in.

Mrs. Martin had asked for prayers on Sunday for those about to enlist. Sounded like she couldn't hold Traft back any longer; he'd probably be the first in line.

My mind brought up a picture of all the men from Vida who would be registering. I said a prayer for each of them by name, asking that if any of them got drafted, they would all come back to their homes and families. I thought of Charlie's last letter. Perhaps he'd meant it to be light, but the story he related only added to my worries:
I had a job a little out of the ordinary today. Was detailed to guard the target range. That is the target that the aeroplanes practice shooting at. One of the English chaps asked me if I had stood sentry before. On my reply in the negative he said, “Don't worry. The safest place is at the target.” Guess he doesn't think much of the pilots' aim!
But at the end of the letter, he had drawn fifteen stars. I knew that meant he'd lost fifteen more comrades.

I had tried to write about my conflicted feelings in the last
Arlington News
installment. Mr. Miltenberger sent it back to me. “Our readers want homestead stories,” he wrote, “not philosophy.” I'd quickly written up a piece about harvest and dutifully sent that in. The check arrived, so I guessed it passed muster.

I leaned against the door frame. If I was this fatigued from one night's loss of sleep, how did Charlie and the other soldiers feel, wakeful night after night after night?

Fingers of deeper pink stretched across the sky. I couldn't help but watch it turn from rose to red to purple to blue. Etched against that changing and endless sky, I saw an eagle. Its wings spread strong and wide, it flew lazy loops above the prairie. Suddenly it dived down, down, down. Then it rose sharply. Something—a sage hen?—was trapped in its talons. The eagle screamed to announce his success, then flew toward a distant butte. I strained to watch and finally lost it in the rising sun. A Sunday school verse came back to me:
They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.
I stood up. Even though I was both weary and faint, I still had a horse to turn out to pasture and morning chores to do. And I would do them on two tired legs, not on eagle's wings.

I was restaking my green beans when I heard a rider approaching. I glanced up, shielding my eyes from the sun with my vine-stained right hand. It was Rooster Jim.

“Come on in and have some coffee.” I dropped my hoe and stepped toward him as he trotted Ash into the yard.

He wore an odd expression, one I couldn't read. “This isn't a social visit, Hattie.” After he swung down off Ash, he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time brushing prairie dust from his pants.

“Is something wrong? Is it Perilee?” I wiped my hands on my grimy apron. “The baby?”

“No, no, they're all right.” He wrapped Ash's reins around the saddle horn. The silky gray horse nibbled at some clover that was taking over my onions. “Mr. Ebgard wanted me to tell you. Wanted you to know right away.”

I edged toward him. “Jim, you'd best tell me right out. And be done with it.”

He tugged off his hat. “It's Martin,” he said, working his hands around its brim. “He's contested your claim.”

“What?” I exhaled hard. “I don't understand. What's that mean?”

“It happens. A couple months ago, Lisa Edwards, over by Cow Creek, got her claim contested by a neighbor. Said she wasn't really living on the place, wasn't fulfilling the residency requirement.”

“But I live here,” I sputtered. “Have since I came out.”

“Well, it's not your living here that Traft's challenging.” Rooster Jim ducked his head and spoke to his shoe tops. “It's your age.”

A warmth crept up from my chest over my neck to the top of my head. “Age?”

Jim lifted his head. “See, unless you're the head of household, you've gotta be twenty-one to file a claim.”

“But Uncle Chester filed—”

“Traft says he had no right to leave you something he didn't really own.”

“Is that true?” I rubbed my forehead. “About leaving it to me?”

Jim cleared his throat. “Technically, probably.”

My head felt so light, I thought I might faint. “But why?” I asked. Don't know why I did—I knew the answer. Traft couldn't grow the biggest ranch around hemmed in by honyockers like me. He'd probably been cooking this up since I turned him down that first day. Oh, why had I been so smart to him? Maybe if I'd been a little more civil—

“What do I do?”

“Here's how it works. Mr. Ebgard hears the case because he's the closest land official. Traft tried to get him to make a ruling today, but Ebgard said you had the right to be heard, too.”

Uncle Chester's letter came back to me:
I trust you've enough of your mother's backbone.
Did I have enough for another fight? “So I have to go to Wolf Point?”

Jim nodded.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“But that's no time to—” I stopped myself. To do what? Age five years? I couldn't change the fact that I was sixteen. Well, almost seventeen, come October 28.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Jim asked.

I thought it over. I did. I wanted him and Karl and Perilee and Leafie. All my friends. I wasn't sure I did have enough backbone to face Traft one more time. But I couldn't bear the thought of having my friends watch me lose my claim. And to Traft Martin! “Thanks. But I'll go on in myself.”

Rooster Jim patted my shoulder as he left. “However it comes out, you should be real proud of yourself, Hattie. Real proud.”

I thought about that as I got ready for bed. What good was being proud when you didn't have a roof of your own to be proud under?

         

The bell jingled as I entered Mr. Ebgard's office. He hopped right up and found me a chair.

“Afternoon, Mr. Ebgard.” I kept my chin up. Helped to hold back the tears.

“I'm real sorry about all this, Hattie.” He fussed with some papers on his desk. “Part of the job.”

“I know.” I lifted my chin another inch. “Shall we get started?”

He sighed. “I expect we'd better.”

The bell jingled again. Traft Martin swaggered inside. He made a big show of tipping his hat to me. “Good afternoon, Miss Brooks.”

A curt nod was all I would give him.

Mr. Ebgard reached behind him and flipped through his files. He fumbled around so long that Traft began to rock on his feet. “Come on, Ebgard. Can't be that many
B
's.”

A few more moments and Mr. Ebgard pulled out a file. “Let me review my notes.”

Traft slammed down on an empty chair. “What's to review?” He jerked his thumb toward me. “She isn't twenty-one. Plain and simple. She admitted as much to witnesses.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Mr. Ebgard interrupted. “When is your next birthday, Miss Brooks?”

“Coming up. End of October. October twenty-eighth.”

“Hmmm.” Mr. Ebgard scribbled something down.

“Now you can bake her a cake.” Traft leaned forward on the chair. “Her birthday isn't the question here. It's her age. Ask her how old she is.”

“I'm in charge of this hearing,” said Mr. Ebgard. “And you'd best let me run it my way, Mr. Martin, or I will reschedule this hearing for October twenty-ninth.”

I couldn't stop my smile. I still wouldn't be old enough on October 29, but I saw what Mr. Ebgard was trying to do.

“Now, Miss Brooks. Will you please tell me where you were born?”

“Oh, for crying out—” Traft slapped his hand on his thigh.

“Your birthplace?” Mr. Ebgard continued calmly. “And year?”

“Arlington, Iowa,” I answered. “October twenty-eighth, 1901.”

“See!” Traft closed his eyes to do the math. “That makes her sixteen. Nowhere near old enough.”

“Who are your parents?” Mr. Ebgard asked.

“Raymond and Katherine Brooks,” I answered.

He nodded and made a note.

“But they are no longer living.” I touched Mother's watch, pinned to my blouse.

“Oh?” Mr. Ebgard scribbled something else. “So who is your guardian?”

I chewed on my lower lip. “No one, sir. I mean, different folks took me in, but I didn't have anyone official like that.”

“No guardian?” Mr. Ebgard's pencil poised above the paper.

“No.”

“Would you say your upbringing was different from most girls your age?” he asked.

“Cut this tea party talk and get down to business!”

Mr. Ebgard raised his eyebrow at Traft. “Your upbringing?” he prompted.

I thought about it for a minute. Mr. Ebgard's questions were even beginning to puzzle me. What
did
any of this have to do with my homestead claim? “Well, I guess it was fine. I mean, I didn't have folks to fuss over me like some girls I know.” Mildred Powell, for one. If she even got one sniffle, her mother put her to bed and waited on her hand on foot. “I guess I learned to do for myself sooner.”

“How much sooner, would you say?”

“How much?” I wrinkled my forehead. Then I smiled. I saw exactly where Mr. Ebgard was headed. I decided to play along. “Oh, five or six years, I'd say.” I nodded. “Yes, definitely five or six years.”

“Ebgard!” Traft looked ready to explode.

“Five or six years. Hmmm.” Mr. Ebgard scribbled furiously on his paper. “Very interesting.” He scribbled some more. I glanced over at Traft. He was rolling a cigarette, dropping tobacco on Mr. Ebgard's office floor. The cigarette was finished by the time Mr. Ebgard spoke again.

“Mr. Martin,” he began.

Traft shifted in his chair, dropped the cigarette in his pocket and smirked at me.

“Mr. Martin, while the law does specify an age of majority in order to file a homestead claim—”

“Yes, and it's not sixteen!”

“It also provides for the ability for a single woman, head of household, to file. Some might infer that the majority age applies in such a case—”

“Which it does!” Traft jumped up. It looked as if he'd figured out where Mr. Ebgard was going, too.