Prairie Evers (5 page)

I especially liked that tune because it had a Chevy in it, and that’s what we drove, a Chevy. I stopped singing long enough to say, “Daddy?”

Daddy said, “Hmm?”

“What’s a levee?”

“Oh, it’s a kind of embankment.”

“What’s it for?”

“Well, to hold water back, I guess. Usually.”

“Why would a guy drive a Chevy there?”

“Well, now. I don’t know. Could be all sorts of reasons, I suppose.”

Daddy looked thoughtful, like he was thinking over the reasons a guy might drive a Chevy to a levee. He took a drag on his cigarette and then let the tip hang out the window again. I poked his leg, hard, which was my signal to him that he should not be smoking, and he patted my leg back real gentle to say,
I know, little chicklet, and someday maybe I’ll quit, but not right now.
I had to be satisfied with that, and he had to put up with my nagging. After a while he said, “You know, I don’t really know that I do know exactly what a levee is, now that you mention it. I guess we’ll have to look it up when we get home.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” By then the chorus had come around the second time. I set into singing again, belting it out pretty good. Before long Mama joined in, and even Daddy sang a line here and there. We pulled into the parking lot at the farmers’ market sounding like a rock concert. The man getting out of
the vehicle next to ours gave us a look, and I thought, Well, you just don’t know how to have fun, mister.

I felt purely happy at that moment. Except for the fact that Grammy wasn’t there, life was perfect. It was still summer, and I loved summer. Pretty soon it would be fall, and I loved fall too. My hens were laying, the gardens were growing, Mama and Daddy were tired but happy, and Daddy had promised that the minute he got a spare second he was going to put a platform up in the fork of the maple tree for me so I would have a tree house. Lately I was starting to think Ezekiel wasn’t a rooster after all, and wondering if an Australorp I’d named Fiddle just might be. He—or she—had been getting bigger and bossier by the minute, and every day I waited for a crow that would prove my suspicion. All in all I thought it’d be hard to improve on things, if you weren’t going to move back to North Carolina, which I knew we weren’t. I sighed with contentment and scrambled after Mama out the passenger-side door.

What I thought later about that day is how you never know when something big is headed straight at you. One day Grammy and I were playing Monopoly, and the next day she was on a bus going back to Vine’s Cove. One day I was snug and happy in between my folks on our way to the market, and the next— Well, you just never know.

THE BEST OF TIMES AND THE WORST OF TIMES

There was
a story written a long time ago that Grammy liked to quote from: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is how it began. I never understood that. How could something be two opposite ways at once? But it’s true, it can be.

Midway through that Wednesday at the market a lady came up to our booth and said to her friend, “Jennifer, I haven’t seen a quilt like this since I was down in Kentucky. Would you look at this. Would
you look at this pattern. And the colors. It’s so bold. Very unique.”

Her friend agreed, and the lady asked my mama, “How much is it?”

Mama was about to tell her two hundred and fifty dollars. That’s what we always charged. But something got into me. I said to myself, The clothes that woman is wearing probably cost that much. I’ll bet she wouldn’t bat an eyelash at paying more. It wouldn’t hurt to ask. I stepped up and said, “Five hundred dollars.” Mama looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses.

The lady said, “I just think I have to take it. What do you think, Jennifer?”

Jennifer had a cell phone up to her ear and she was talking about shallots and lamb chops to someone, and should she get a bottle of Bordeaux for dinner, but she stopped long enough to say, “It’s beautiful; I think five hundred is a good price.”

“Yes, I think so too,” the lady said, rolling her eyes at Jennifer, who didn’t notice. She winked at me and made a little snapping motion with her hand that said,
Talk, talk, talk
. I couldn’t help but grin. A minute later that lady took Mama’s quilt away with her after writing a check for five hundred dollars with no more fuss than if it had been for five. She bought my eggs too. My very first sale, from my very own flock of hens. I wanted to hop up and down, but I didn’t.

The lady pulled a crisp five-dollar bill out of her wallet and
told me to keep the change. I was going to put the dollar tip in our cash box, but Mama said no. She was laughing. “Act like a kid and not a little old banker lady, why don’t you? Just for a minute? You put that in your pocket. I guess you’ve paid off the debt on the chickens plus some, you brought in so much extra on that quilt.”

I didn’t like to do that, I wanted to figure it out exact, as I intended to pay back all it took to get me started in egg farming. But Mama said, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out once we get home, if you must. Wait until I tell your dad.” Daddy was off a few stands away, visiting with a man who made honey.

So I shoved that five-dollar bill in my pocket and was about to go looking around. That’s what I do sometimes, if we aren’t too busy. Mama and Daddy don’t mind, as long as I check in every little while.

But just then a woman came up to us. It gave me a start, because she was the meanest coffee-drinking lady from the Miss New Paltz Diner. I recognized her pinched-up face. She said, “Oh, such a sweet little girl, did she help with all this work?”

Mama studied the woman pretty careful without answering.

“I’m surprised to see a child here when school’s just started today.”

Mama said, “Is there something I can help you with?”

The lady picked up a birdhouse and turned it every which way, oohing and aahing and making out that she was nice and friendly, but of course I knew better. Daddy came back just
then, and the lady started in on him. Wasn’t it a fine day, and wasn’t this a gorgeous birdhouse, it must’ve taken some work to make it, and who did all this work? Did his little girl do it, and shouldn’t she be in school?

Daddy took the birdhouse from her, kind of gentle but firm, and set it back down on the display table. He said, “Were you wanting to buy something, ma’am?”

The lady looked at Daddy real sharp. “Your daughter
does
go to school?”

Mama and Daddy glanced at each other. “We teach her at home,” Daddy said.

“Oh, I see.” The lady sized me up like a hawk hovering atop a mouse. “I’ll bet you want to go to school, though, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“What for?”

She laughed. “Why, to be educated and learn your basics.”

“I learned my basics a long time ago.”

The look on her face said she didn’t think so. “You’ve got a computer and books and all the other things the kids have at school so they’ll know what’s what out in the world?”

I frowned at her. “I have about a million books, and my mama and daddy have a million more. And I know how to use a computer.” I was glad I had been to the library and researched my chickens that way. “I know just about everything there is to know about one. Besides which, some things are not all they’re cracked up to be.”

“Well,
well
. Aren’t you the smart one? Don’t you want to go to school to be with children your own age?”

“I don’t like children much.” I didn’t know as I exactly meant that—I didn’t really know very many kids—but I thought it might make her go away.

“Is that so?” She raised her eyebrows. “And tell me, what will you be when you grow up?”

“I’ll go on raising my hens and selling the eggs, and do like we’ve always done.”

“Oh goodness,” she said, sounding very amused.

I looked at her real steady.

She laughed, and not in a nice way.

That made me mad. “You have not been raised correctly if you don’t know any better than to laugh at a person. And the way you pull your hair back tight from your face makes your nose look even longer than it is. You ought to think about changing it.”

Mama said, “Prairie.”

Before Mama could say anything else, I told the lady, “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” but I didn’t mean it. I wanted to tell her, “You’re as plain as a water spigot and mean as rain in January,” and I only kept quiet out of consideration for Mama’s feelings.

The lady gave us all a disgusted look. “I can see you don’t remember me, Loren Lynn. I did think about buying one of these birdhouses as a gift for my son, he just got a nice promotion at the bank, but I’m afraid they are just overpriced. And I
must say, it’s a shame a child of this age is not in school, learning to be among other children and learning some manners, too. Obviously she doesn’t know a thing about that if she’ll speak to an adult like she just spoke to me. Mark my words, you’ll be sorry someday.”

“Who was that?” Daddy asked after she stalked away.

“That has to be Anne Oliver. I haven’t seen her in fifteen years.”

“She don’t seem real fond of you.” A grin quirked at the corner of Daddy’s mouth.

Mama looked upset. “She’s not, she never was. I beat her son in a spelling bee way back in the fifth grade, and I swear it started then. Plus, my mother always got the top prize for canning at the county fair and my dad was elected over her husband as township clerk three years running.”

Daddy rolled his eyes, and Mama shook her head. “Some people just don’t have enough to keep them occupied, I guess.”

The next moment, the lady who bought the quilt came back.

She said to my mama, “I have an idea I’m just too excited to keep to myself. You tell me what you think of it, and if you say no, I’ll understand. But your work is so good. Your use of color, and the patterns— Well, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But I direct a community arts program in New Paltz, and I just wondered if there’s a chance you’d consider giving some classes this fall. There’s a hole in the curriculum and the minute I bought this quilt I knew just how to fill it.”

Mama’s eyes had gone wide. “You’re kidding.”

“I most certainly am not!” The lady had one of those smiles that you couldn’t help grinning back at.

“We live in New Paltz!” Mama exclaimed.

“Well, that will work out beautifully, then.”

I was so proud for my mama right then. I didn’t give any thought to what it might mean to me.

BETRAYAL

The next morning
I rolled out of bed and went to my window. It was sunny and mild and I had the blossoming feeling I get when a day seems full of promise. In the night I’d heard coyotes wailing. It seemed like a good omen, even though I knew I’d have to be extra careful about my chickens and never fail to put them back in the coop at night, or else they’d get eaten. I always loved to hear the coyotes howl back on Peabody Mountain. They sounded so wild and free and mysterious.
Hearing them here, too, made it seem like there was a thread strung out between me and Grammy.

I gazed out at the gardens and barn and chicken coop, the pointy-topped hemlock and the meadow rolling down toward town. Maybe today I’d try to coax our new cats out from the shadows in the barn. Yesterday Daddy had gotten two—one gray and one black—from a man at the farmers’ market. Daddy wanted them to keep the mice down, but I wanted them just for themselves. So far I’d hardly caught sight of them, but Mama said if I was patient they’d lose their shyness.

But that would be later. First I had to let the chickens out and clean the nest boxes. Then maybe I’d walk to the woods. I could make it a nature walk, which Grammy and I did pretty often as part of my schooling. There was a little twisty-armed shrub along the lane. If I took a tree guide, maybe I could learn its name. I could draw a picture of it and write a poem, too. Mama had me doing haiku lately.

Small twisty-armed shrub
would do for the first line, I thought as I rifled through my bureau drawer, looking for my favorite shirt. I’d worn it so much, it was soft and thin and had a hole under the arm, but I wouldn’t let Mama get rid of it.
Along the lane to the woods.
What name do you use?