Rufus M. (15 page)

Mama had left some lentil soup for them on the stove. They ate it and while they were eating Jane said, "Listen! Let's be good to Mama. The minute she says to any one of us, 'Go to the store,' we'll go. We won't say, 'Aw, you go, Rufe,' or 'You go, Joe.' Whoever she asks to go, that person, go!"

"Yeah," said Joe.

Rufus was busy scraping his plate clean, but with the spoon in his mouth he nodded his head up and down, too. They all felt good, full of fine intentions, and then they all went back to school.

Rufus hung his hat in the cloakroom on peg three. He went into the schoolroom and sat down in his seat. The first thing this class did in the afternoon was geography.

"Where does the River Penobscot rise?" the teacher asked. "Hands?"

A lot of hands were raised, but before the teacher could call on anybody the door opened and a man came into the schoolroom. This was not the music supervisor, the writing supervisor, nor the Superintendent of Schools. And this was not a soldier to tell some of his experiences. This was an ordinary man. Mama had come into the classroom earlier. Maybe this was somebody's father. But he wasn't. He was a man who started right in talking about gardens.

Everybody in the class should raise a Victory Garden, he said; plant seeds and raise vegetables, so this country would have food enough for the armed forces and the stricken nations, and thus help win the war. He stated that he would go up one street and down another teaching the people how to plant their gardens and how to take care of them. "My name is Hogan," he said. "Be looking for me. I'll be there." And he left.

The man's plan sounded good to Rufus. In the past the four Moffats had planted small gardens and sometimes they had had real radishes, carrots, and lettuce from them that they could eat. He could hardly wait to get home and start his Victory Garden, especially after the teacher passed around bright packages of vegetable seeds to all the children. They were two cents a package and the children could bring the pennies for them any time during the week. Rufus chose beans, string beans.

When school was out, Joey and Jane met Rufus again. Nancy Stokes ran up. Everybody in the school yard was talking about the man. Rufus found that he had been in every room telling everybody about Victory Gardens. Joe and Jane and Nancy had bright packages of seeds, too. But they were not supposed to plant them until the man came to their house, looked their yard over, and gave advice.

The children hurried home as fast as they could. The man might come to their house first. They sat down on the front porch and waited for the man. "My name is Hogan," he'd said in every room. "I'll be there," he'd said. The Moffats waited for him but he didn't come. They waited at least fifteen minutes, jumping up every few seconds and running to the street to look for him. They hoped that by now he was at least next door. But no, he was nowhere in sight. They grew tired of waiting. Of course, they reasoned, the man couldn't be everywhere at once. He probably began over on the other side of town or up on Shingle Hill. Why wait for this man any longer? They knew how to plant gardens—dig up the earth, pick out the chunks, the roots, the rocks, and the boulders, drop in the seeds, water everything, cover up the seeds, pat the earth down, put up signs telling what was planted where, and let it grow.

Why wait for this man any longer? they asked themselves again, running to the corner and giving him one last chance. At this rate spring would be over and summer gone while they sat here and waited for a man to show them how to plant. That man was good for people who did not know how to plant, they decided, but they did know how. Moreover, consider the nice surprise for Mama and Sylvie when they returned tonight to know the gardens had been planted!

Rufus was the most impatient. He looked at his big fat envelope of beans. Lovely bright green vines and beans were painted on the cover. "Wait, if you want to, for the man," he said. "I'm diggin' now."

"Me, too," agreed Jane. "Mama will be glad we worked while she was away and did not gallivant."

The Moffats' backyard was very small. Their front yard was very long. What a vegetable garden they could plant in the front yard, the children thought! But then they would have to dig up all that green grass, and, besides, they had never seen a vegetable garden in anybody's front yard; only flowers. They'd better begin on the backyard, especially as Mama was away and they could not ask her what she thought. Maybe later she would let them plant the whole front yard, too.

Joey took a stick and marked off a square. There was no grass in this square, just hard dirt, pounded down by children playing games here, especially hopscotch. Then Joey marked the square off into four sections, one each for all four Moffats.

"We'll dig a space for Sylvie, too," he said. "Most likely she'd like to plant something, radishes perhaps."

Sylvie liked radishes. Not Rufus. He liked beans. He was going to plant nothing but beans. The beans were big and he could see them when he stuck them in the ground. He examined Joey's onion seed to see if that was going to be fun. No, they weren't any good—tiny little things.
What's the good of onion seeds?
thought Rufus. These big white beans of his, one by one ... He could hardly wait for the digging part of the Victory Gardens to be finished.

"Everybody plant beans," he urged.

Jane did not want to plant beans. She liked corn better. If Rufus were going to plant only beans, the rest of them should plant other vegetables so they would not have to eat beans all the time. Naturally since corn on the cob was Jane's favorite vegetable, corn was what she was going to plant.

"Do you know how to plant it?" asked Nancy, as she crawled through the gate in the fence with some extra spades and shovels.

"Yes," said Jane. "I watched a man in the country plant corn once. He was a real farmer. He planted the corn in little hills. Or, rather, I can't quite remember whether he planted the corn up in the little hills he made or down in the little holes beside the hills."

"I should think up in the hills," said Nancy, "so they'd get the sun."

"Yeah," said Jane. "But down in the little valleys the water would collect whenever it rained and keep them nice and wet."

"That's so, too," agreed Nancy.

"Still, I'm not sure," said Jane. And all the while she and Nancy dug, they discussed the pros and cons of planting the corn down in the little hollows or up on the mounds.

Rufus dug hard. His hands and face were red. He didn't talk to anybody. He was anxious to get his beans into the ground as rapidly as possible and watch them grow. Joey did not talk much, either. He was figuring in his mind about this backyard. This garden they were planting would use up most of the space. But there would still be room in the old barn for silver foxes if he started to raise them. That ad about silver foxes was still running in
Popular Mechanics.

Finally the children finished digging. Joey measured out the little furrows where the seeds should be dropped. He did not measure out Jane's corn patch. She had to do those special hills and valleys herself. Joey felt like a real surveyor with a piece of string tied to two sticks. He held one and Rufus the other, and they drew a line where each groove for the seeds should be made.

Then Rufus placed his beans, one by one, carefully in his three furrows. The beans were very pretty, standing out white against the dark brown earth. Rufus liked the smell of the earth. He patted it down good and hard over his beans and he left loose dirt in the paths to walk on. Joey said this was wrong. The earth should be scattered loosely over the seeds and patted down hard on the paths. This did not seem natural to Rufus, for it is much pleasanter to walk on soft dirt and one can easily see where the beans lie if the dirt is patted down hard on them. Nevertheless he did as Joey said.

Rufus watched Joey sprinkle onion seed and carrot seed in his space. And he watched Jane and Nancy deliberately stick their corn kernels down in the little valleys where they finally decided to plant them.
Next to beans,
corns are the best things to plant,
thought Rufus,
because you can see them good, too.

Finally everybody had all his seeds planted. The children were really tired now. They stuck a shingle at the end of each row and put the empty seed envelopes on them. Now everything was properly labeled and no one would confuse the carrots with the beans. As though that were possible, thought Rufus, who knew he would never forget exactly where his three rows of beans were planted; and he gazed at these fondly.

The children had worked so hard they were certainly hungry now. Nancy ran home to supper and Jane heated the rest of the lentil soup. She and Joey and Rufus ate this and then they went out on the front porch and sat down to wait for Mama and Sylvie.

Every now and then Rufus ran around to the backyard, went straight to his bean patch, and looked to see if any of his beans were up yet. It began to grow dark. The darker it grew, the closer to the earth Rufus had to crouch. He even lay flat on his stomach and examined the earth to see if just one of his beans might not have started to grow. Finally he gently poked his earth-stained forefinger into the soft ground, felt around carefully, and found a bean. He pulled it out, held it between his fingers, rolled it on his palm, and studied it. It looked just the same as when he planted it a little while before. Only its skin looked a little shriveled. Rufus put it back and covered it up and patted down the earth.

"Grow," he said.

On the front porch Joe said to Jane, "Rufus expects his beans to be up already."

"I know it," laughed Jane.

As a matter of fact Jane was having to hug her knees to keep from running around to her corn mounds just to make sure some of that wasn't beginning to sprout, too. She closed her eyes happily as she envisioned tall corn blowing in the breeze and herself reaching up on tiptoes to pick enough ears for supper. She liked corn so much, golden bantam corn, that as far as she was concerned the family could have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, she wouldn't mind having a corn week. Last winter one week had been set aside as potato week when everybody was supposed to eat as many potatoes as possible. The Moffats had had potato pancakes often. It was lucky there was never a squash week, for nobody was very fond of that. But corn week! That would be the best of all, thought Jane.

"I better see what Rufus is doin'," said Jane. "He might be stepping on the seeds."

"Yeah," agreed Joe.

Rufus picked himself up when he heard Jane. He said, "Nothin's up yet."

"O' course not," said Jane.

After Rufus disappeared around the house, Jane stood surveying her corn patch. Had she been right in putting the corn down in the little valleys or should she have planted it up in the hills? She finally bent over, poked her finger around in the dirt until she found a kernel, held it up, and examined it. It did not look any different than it had when she planted it. She stuck it back in the earth and rejoined the others.

"Nothin's up yet," she said.

Joey had been thinking about his onions. There was one thing everybody in the Moffats' house liked very much and that was pot roast and onions. Onions were very important. In fact, Joey was sure a day scarcely ever went by when Mama did not need an onion.

Of course, nothing was up yet, he thought. You could excuse Rufus for thinking things were up because he was so little, but Jane should know better. Onion seeds were so small, Joey thought, that you probably couldn't even see them now anymore. He wondered if you could. If you could still see them, he wondered what they'd look like—same as they always looked probably.

Janey and Rufus raced down to the corner to watch the trolleys and wait for Mama. While they were gone, Joey sauntered around to the backyard and looked at the garden. This was a good garden they'd planted. Just for the fun of it, why not see what onion seed looked like now? He dug around with his fingers in the onion row. He couldn't see any seed at all. It was getting pretty dark now. Perhaps if he had a match...

Joey went into the kitchen, found a match, lit it on his corduroy pants, and held it close to the ground. He couldn't see a trace of the seed. He hoped the ants hadn't eaten them—if they ate onion seed. Of course the onions hadn't started to grow yet and neither had Jane's corn nor Rufus's beans. Rufus and Jane were crazy to even think anything might have come up!