The Fiery Ring (2 page)

“We agreed to come, both of us,” Bill said heavily. “Maybe it was a mistake, but we had no way of knowing that.”

“I worry about our children.”

“So do I. They don’t like this place. Joy asked me today if there was any chance of our going back to Virginia.”

Elaine longed to urge her husband to take them back home, too, but she held her tongue. They were locked into this land now. Nobody was buying property, and they would lose what little they had if they walked away and left it. Seeing the troubled light in Elaine’s eyes, Bill pulled her close and held her. “I don’t like this place either, and I know you hate it. But I’ve been thinking, all we need is one good year. If we have it this year, we’ll sell out. Land prices will be higher then, and we’ll go back home.”

Elaine leaned back, excitement in her eyes. “You mean it?”

“Sure I do! You have to grow up here to get along with these winters, and I miss the hills. We’ll do it the first good year we have.”

“Then I pray 1926 is the year!”

****

Bismarck was already held in the dead grip of winter. The snows had fallen and melted before falling again and freezing, leaving the streets a mass of crusty mud and ice. Bill held on to the wheel of the truck tightly as it bounced roughly, then pulled up in front of Langley’s General Store. “When this street thaws out it’s going to be one big mess,” he muttered. “Maybe they’ll pave it.”

Getting out of the truck, he helped Elaine out first, then his daughters, Joy and Dawn. Travis followed. The streets were filled with the usual Saturday crowd, mostly farmers coming to town for supplies. Bismarck was not Minneapolis by any means, just a small town of about nine thousand in the middle of the North Dakota prairie land, but the railroad did provide a connection with the rest of the country, pulsing two or three times a day with trains coming and going. As cold as it was, some had gathered at the station to watch the train arrive, even though they had no one coming in on it.

“Let’s get in the store and thaw out,” Travis said. “I feel like an icicle.”

“Me too,” Joy said. “Daddy, can I have some candy?”

Dawn piped up, “Me too, Daddy!” At the age of thirteen, she was the image of her father—a fact that delighted Bill Winslow.

“I think we can afford that. It’ll give us something to chew on at the movies.”

“What are we going to see?”

“Whatever’s on.”

“I know what’s on,” Elaine said. “It’s the
Hunchback of Notre Dame.
”

“Oh, phooey, who wants to see that old thing again!” Dawn exclaimed. “Why couldn’t it be Charlie Chaplin? He’s funny.”

“Well, since there’s only one movie theater here, we’ll have to take what they’ve got. Come on, let’s go inside. I’m cold too.”

For the next half hour the family roamed around the store, going their different ways. Travis stayed close to the glass case full of knives, pistols, and rifles, while Joy inspected the yard goods and ready-made dresses. She spent a great deal of time at the shoe display but did not try any on. As for Dawn, she had not outgrown her love of dolls and examined the sparse stock with intense envy.

Bill and Elaine stayed together to select the staples they would need for the next week. They turned when a voice said, “Hey, Bill. Hello, Elaine.”

Elaine went forward to greet her sister, Opal Tatum. Opal was a small, thin woman who had never been hearty. Her eyes were a faded blue, and as usual she had a worried look on her face. “So good to see you, Elaine. I’ve been meaning to come over, but it’s been too cold.”

“Yes, it has, but it’s good to see you, Opal. Hello, Albert.”

Albert Tatum was a tall, heavy man with a full stomach and a fleshy red complexion. A straggly mustache covered his mouth, and his eyes were a pale blue.

“Good to see you,” he grunted.

Bill had never felt particularly close to Albert. He had always felt that Tatum had misrepresented the farm to them, although Bill had never complained. “Just came in to buy a few things and give the family a night out.”

“We’re going to the movies,” Joy said. She spoke to the Tatums’ daughter, Olean, who was a little older than Joy. Olean was wearing a new coat and new shoes. She was not a pretty girl but dressed better than any of her friends. Now she sniffed, “There’s nothing on but that old hunchback thing. Last week we saw Harold Lloyd. Now
that
was good.”

Witt Tatum, at eighteen, was a copy of his father, tall and already showing a heaviness that would catch up with him later. Witt reached out and pulled Joy’s hair as she joined the group. Grinning, he said, “That picture will scare you to death. You’d better not go.”

“I will too go!” Joy said, jerking away from him. He had always teased her, and now she resented being treated like a child.

Albert looked with displeasure at his brother-in-law. “These are hard times, Bill. Don’t need to be spending your money foolishly on movies.”

Bill Winslow put his level gaze on Tatum. “I don’t expect eating a meal out and going to a movie is going to change things much, Albert.”

Tatum was a bluff, arrogant man. He bulldozed his wife so that she had practically no will of her own and had tried the same tactic on Bill Winslow. It had not worked, and the result was a coolness between the two men. “Have it your own way, then.”

Travis waited until the Tatums had moved out of earshot, then said bitterly to Joy, “It’s all his fault that we’re here anyhow. He told all kinds of lies about the place. He talked Dad into buying it. You know what I heard?”

“What?”

“I heard he got a commission from the man that owned it for selling it to Dad.”

Joy stared at her brother. “You don’t mean that. He’s mean, but he wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t he? Look at the way he treats his wife. He spoils those kids rotten, but Aunt Opal has a terrible life. I don’t know why she doesn’t leave him.”

Travis Winslow had always disliked the Tatum youngsters. He had had a knock-down, drag-out fight with Witt a year earlier, and though Travis was younger, he had won. Since then Witt had ignored him whenever possible.

“I miss our friends back in Virginia,” Travis said. When he saw something stir on Joy’s face, he regretted having mentioned it, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Of course,” he said quickly, “they’re changed now. They’re all three years older.”

“Still I’d like to see them,” Joy said. “Robin told me she’d write, and she did twice, but then she quit.”

Travis suddenly realized he had made his sister sad. “Come on, sis, we’re going to eat at the Royal Café. I’m going to stuff myself like a Thanksgiving turkey!”

****

The Royal Café was not a fancy or expensive place. It served meals to the farmers who came in only once or twice a week. But the food was good, and Joy loved eating there. She ordered meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and Travis ordered a steak and a baked potato. Dawn ordered a hamburger and fries, to the disgust of Joy and Travis. “You can get hamburgers anytime,” Travis snorted.

“Hamburgers are my favorite food,” Dawn insisted. “I wish we had them every day.”

While they waited for the food, the three siblings entertained each other with stories about their neighbors, and then when the meal came, they threw themselves into it with gusto. The dessert choices were apple and cherry pie, and
even though it was chilly in the restaurant, Joy wanted ice cream on hers.

As they were finishing their dessert Bill Winslow turned to the children and said, “Your mother and I have been talking, and I think it’s something you three should know about.”

With some apprehension all three youngsters looked up. “What is it, Dad?” Travis asked. “Something bad?”

“No. I think you’ll like this.” Bill’s wide mouth turned upward at the corners. He loved his children dearly and wanted them to have good lives, but he did not see any possibility of that where they were. “The first good year we have—and I hope it’s this next year—the price of land will go back up again. As soon as it does, we’re going to sell out and go back home.”

“You mean back to Virginia to our old house?”

“No, we can’t go back to the old place, but we’ll find someplace as close as we can get. I’m hungry to see something sticking up out of the ground, like a hill or a mountain.”

Joy’s eyes blazed with excitement, and she forgot the ice cream that was soaking into her apple pie. “Oh, Daddy, maybe it will be this coming year!”

“Maybe so, punkin’. I know it’s been hard on all of us. One good year, and we can go back down south where we belong.”

****

Joy had drawn her chair closer to the coal oil lamp. Before her were four tablets, each of them with a date drawn in heavy black crayon across the front. Picking up the first one, she opened it and thought about how different she was from the time she had written these entries. She had started keeping the journal when she was only nine, and it gave her a great deal of pleasure to turn back the clock and read what had been on her mind then.

The first entry was dated May 20, 1919:

I am going to keep a dairy. It won’t
be to hard because I like to rite. I will put down everthing in this dairy that is on my hart and someday when I’m a gron up I will look back and no what I was thinking wen I was only nine years old.

Joy smiled at the misspellings and the large childish scrawls. Her penmanship had improved and so had her spelling. She flipped through the journal, letting her eyes roam over the pages, and then picked up another journal. She had read them all so often she could practically recite them from memory. Her face flushed when she came to an entry in which she had tried to describe her thoughts about getting her first period. The writing was somewhat better but was still immature:

It scared me very much. Mom had tried to warn me but I din’t pay much atention. Now I wish I had. I was so scared but Mom talked to me for a long time and its all right. She said its very natural and it means that I’m becuming a full-grown woman. I hope I can talk to Dawn about this before it happens to her. She’ll be scared to death!

Joy had been very honest in her journal, and she was always nervous that someone would find her writings. She kept them hidden as well as possible behind a drawer of a large bureau.

Picking up the current journal, she folded the pages back, placing at the top November 15, 1925, and then began to write:

We went out tonight and had dinner at the Royal Café. I had meatloaf and mashed potatoes and for dessert I had apple pie with ice cream. Afterward we went to
see The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Cheney. It was not a good movie but very interesting. He is such an ugly man, the hunchback, but the real Lon Cheney isn’t ugly at all. I tried to pretend I wasn’t scared, but I really was. But the best thing of all was, Daddy said tonight while we were eating that if we have a good year next year and a good crop, the price of land will go up. And if it does, we’re going to sell this old farm and go back to Virginia.

Joy studied what she wrote and then continued:

I’ve been praying to God that He would get us all home again, and now I’m going to pray even harder than before.

She wrote for ten more minutes and then folded the tablet up and put it in the hiding place. Quickly she got into her narrow bed and, shivering, pulled the covers about her. The last thing she did before going to sleep was to pray, “Oh, God, get me and Mom and Dad and Travis and Dawn back home again!”

CHAPTER TWO

“You Can Have Anything You Want!”

Joy lay under the weight of the blankets, savoring the warmth and dreading getting up. Dawn lay beside her, sleeping like a hibernating bear. Joy had always envied Dawn’s ability to sleep through anything, even the frigid cold. The worst of winter was over now, but March still retained some of its bitter traces. The dawn was just beginning to break, and she could hear her mother downstairs in the kitchen, the faint sounds of pots and pans clanging gently.

Finally, with resolution, she swept the blanket back and climbed out of bed, pulling off her long woolen nightgown. Shivering, she tugged on her underwear as quickly as she could, then her outer clothing. After blowing on her hands, she fumbled with a match to light the coal oil lamp that sat on a small table. The yellow light broke the semidarkness of the bedroom. Hastily, she removed the drawer of the bureau, pulled out the tablet with the red cover, sat down at the table, and began writing. She put the date, March 15, 1926, at the top, then wrote:

It’s my birthday today. I’m sixteen years old and have great hope for this year to come.

She glanced back momentarily at an earlier entry, read it, then went back to the present date.

I was looking back four months ago. We went to the Royal Café for supper in Bismarck and saw The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and that was when Daddy told us that if we had a good year, we would sell out and go back home to Virginia. I haven’t said anything to him about it, but I think the drought has broken. We had a ton of snow this winter, so it looks like this could be the year we go back.

She wrote rapidly until she heard her mother’s voice floating up to her. “Girls, come down and help with breakfast.”

She replaced the notebook in its niche, put the drawer back, and went over to shake her sister. “Dawn, wake up. Time to get ready for breakfast.” As she left the room she heard the train whistle and knew it was the six-thirty southbound freight. She wished she and all of her family were on it. True enough it was only a freight train, but she would be willing to ride on
top
of a train if it would take her back to Virginia.

Downstairs she found her mother busily putting breakfast together. Her mother gave her a hug and smiled. “Happy birthday, Joy.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

At that moment Travis came in, grabbed Joy, and swung her about. She protested but actually liked it very much. “Happy birthday, Joy,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. He held her for a moment longer, then assumed a studious frown. “Now, the only question is—”

“What is the question?” Joy demanded, trying to get loose.