The Magic of Ordinary Days (19 page)

On the morning after about a foot of new snow had fallen, I bundled into my coat and stepped out on the porch. Winter on the plains came as a surprise to me. Our previously bare fields now spread out like a linen cloth on a table sprinkled with sugar. The sun had already burned the clouds away, but the air had yet to begin to warm. Each of my breaths did a smoky dance show before me. All was so silent I could hear the soft whisk of a sparrow hawk as it circled overhead.

Ray came outside to join me. He slurped loudly on his coffee and disturbed the silence. Looking out at the snow, I asked him, “Are you finished with your work now?”

He took another loud sip. “I got plenty of other things that need tending to besides the fields.” He gestured beyond the porch. “This snow'll melt off. Usually before Christmastime comes, we'll get some warm days and even some rain.”

I still hadn't adjusted to all the talk of weather. Even women and children often discussed the changing conditions of the high prairie at long length. After church, in the town, over supper, and in the stores, it was the favorite topic of conversation of everyone around me.

Ray pointed down the roadway that ran between fields, the same one where I had first met Rose and Lorelei. “I got to grade the ruts out of that road before the ground freezes. Then I need to work on the fences.”

I looked back at the snow. So he wouldn't be spending any more time at home after all. I had thought that after harvest and seeding the winter wheat, he would be around more often.

“Last winter, I worked the midnight shift at the sugar beet factory.” He took another sip. “But I won't do that this year.”

I said, “Thank you.” It would be a bit spooky, out so far and by myself at night.

The silence between Ray's slurps was deafening. Finally, he said, “I want to thank you for being so friendly with Martha.”

Ray never ceased to surprise me. “Why wouldn't I be friendly to Martha? She's a wonderful lady, Ray.”

He smiled into his coffee mug. “It wasn't easy for her growing up the only girl in the family, with two brothers for bad company.” Now he laughed to himself. “When she was a teenager, Daniel and I were ‘long about six and ten years old and up to no good at all times. We'd put grasshoppers in her bed and pry open her hairpins, just for sport.”

Our quiet house full of childhood romp and antics? I couldn't imagine it. “Tell me more.”

“The first time she went out on a date, that ole boyfriend of hers drove all the way out here to pick her up. I tell you, he was dressed in his best, and so was Martha. Daniel and I hid right here, under this porch.” He pointed down to the planks beneath our feet. “And while that boy was inside getting drilled by my dad about his intentions, we poured maple syrup on the porch steps. They came out and stepped down in it. For the whole of that date, they were having to stop and kick off grass and pieces of trash and paper that got stuck and dragged off their shoes.”

These were probably the most words Ray had ever spoken to me at once, and he had me laughing. “Poor Martha. You and Daniel were brats.”

Ray was still smiling. “That ole boy never did come around again.”

“Was Martha heartbroken?”

“No,” Ray scoffed. “Well, not so much as I know. Like I said, she grew up keeping pretty much to herself. Our mother was awful busy, and Martha liked her own company best of all.” He turned to me. “But she sure does like you.”

Martha, the matriarch of their family, had treated me as finely as I could have ever wished. Although she knew the real reason for my marrying Ray, she had welcomed me into the family, and Ruth, her oldest daughter, openly wanted to emulate me. I took my thoughts forward in time, to the day when the baby would come early. Ray had said no one would speak unkindly to me, but still, they would know. They would wonder what had happened to make a good girl fall so far.

Franklin came bounding out of the barn. When that old hound first hit snow, he stopped, sniffed, took another step, sniffed again, and then started to pounce into the powder with both front paws. You'd have thought he'd never seen snow before. Now he was diving into it and chopping it up with all four legs. Ray laughed aloud, and even I smiled. A minute later, Franklin saw me and started crossing the ground between the barn and the house, making a new path of churned snow along the way. Then he was galloping up the steps to the porch with chunks of snow spraying away behind him.

“There, boy,” I said as he came up to me, tongue out and panting. I rubbed the top of his head and the soft folds of hide on the sides of his neck. I sank down to my knees so I could get closer to him.

“Careful,” Ray said, and I was. Normal daily movements that once I had taken for granted had become not nearly so easy. I felt heavier by the day and more uncomfortable with my own body and sense of balance. My arms and legs remained thin, but my breasts were larger, and my abdomen had turned into an upside-down bowl.

I continued to pet and scratch Franklin and made a mental note to let Ray see me thoroughly wash my hands before I made breakfast. “Isn't it possible, Ray, that he could freeze in the worst of the winter?”

“Not in the barn, he won't.”

“But now he's getting older.”

Ray slurped again. “He's been out there for years.”

I continued scratching until my legs began to ache. I drew back to my feet, and Franklin took off for more romping in the snow. I followed him with my eyes. “You see, I always wanted a pet.” What was coming over me? “My father never let us have a pet, not even a rabbit.” I hadn't cried in front of anyone except Abby and Bea and wouldn't do it now. Crying made men cringe. “I'm sorry I let Franklin in the house. I didn't realize what an insult it would be to you.”

“Livvy, it's okay.”

I strained to see out into the sunshine.

“With all the other animals gathered in there, that dog'll be fine. Everything's going to be okay now. Trust me,” he said.

We stood together watching Franklin paw at the snow in a search for life, for something to respond back to him. Now a goat was high-stepping its way out of the barn and into the snow, too.

Ray's voice changed. “Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I'd been the one to go away. Daniel would be alive now.” He looked out at the animals and took another sip of coffee.

“Ray, you can't ask yourself those questions. You'll only torment yourself.” I stared away. “Why did Daniel enlist?”

“He didn't have to,” Ray said. “The Draft Board put us 3-A, because we were the only ones left to run this farm, and farming is essential business nowadays.”

“It is.”

“But Daniel knew war was coming. Even before Pearl Harbor, he knew we were going to have to join the war in order to win it. Lots of local boys joined up on their own and left the farms to be run by their fathers. I was older. Maybe I should've talked him out of it.” He paused. “But most of the time, I don't question it. Maybe I was just making a point.”

I puzzled for a moment. “I didn't get it.”

“Things happen for a reason. Even bad things.” He seemed to be searching for words. “Or things that seem bad at first.”

“Ray, what are you saying? Do you believe in fate?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another sip, this one silent. “I think I do. Otherwise, how could we take all the bad stuff?”

I looked back out. “I don't know. But discounting human choice and chance—I can't buy that, either.”

“So you think everything comes about just by chance or by what we do?”

Maybe my heart had hardened more than I'd realized. “I didn't always.”

His coffee mug now empty, he set it on the porch railing. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you're the one tormenting yourself.”

Back in the snow, Franklin had now churned his way around to the back of the barn, out of sight. Ray's voice was low, despite the silence of that morning. “You trusted someone who let you down. If only you could trust me.”

It was the second time in one conversation that he'd asked me to do this.

“Is it so bad here? With me?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I could do to make it better?”

I said, “You have made it better.”

Nineteen

The next day was the first Tuesday in November, Election Day. While the war overseas continued to be fought with bullets, we in the U.S. prepared to make our choice for President at the ballot box. Roosevelt was running for his fourth term after already serving three. We'd had the same President for an unprecedented twelve years, so Roosevelt's opponent, the popular liberal governor from New York, Thomas Dewey, had campaigned on the platform of needed change. Dewey had also criticized our entry into the war and had even accused Roosevelt of lying to Americans in order to get us to join in.

Ray drove us to the post office in Wilson, where we placed our votes.

“We don't need to be switching our commanders in the middle of a war,” Ray said as he drove us away after voting.

Ray and I finally had something upon which we could agree. I said, “Not only that, but don't forget that he brought this country out of the Depression.”

“He's told us the truth from day one.”

Dewey was still youthful at forty-two, in stark contrast to the incumbent, who seemed increasingly weak and fragile. And taken with the American penchant for change, my worry was that, although it was unlikely, a fluke might occur and Roosevelt might be defeated. I said, “Of course he has.”

But the night before, I'd read an article in the paper and learned that in Washington, D.C., a movement to stop the exclusion of Japanese Americans was gaining momentum. Some evacuees had been slowly trickling back to their home cities over the past year. Even around me, many people had stopped referring to the interns as Japs. But Roosevelt was reluctant to do anything drastic before the election. He needed to carry California, where anti-Asian sentiment had always been strong. And I was experiencing negative feelings about Roosevelt for the first time because of it.

I opened my mouth to take a chance, to discuss it with Ray, when a group of three soldiers walking on the sidewalk made me stop still. One of those backs hit me like a fist in the neck. The way he set his shoulders, the width of the neck; it was so like Edward. I thought for just the briefest second it might be him. He would have had no business out here on the plains that I knew of, but then again, how much had I really known of Edward in the first place?

As Ray drove past the soldiers, I got a sideways glimpse of the man's profile. It was a younger man, actually just a big boy who couldn't have been much older than eighteen. But that brief moment of memory left me edgy. That time, that time of him, tried to come back to me.

In the evening, we had plans to go over to Martha's house, where we'd share supper and listen to the election reports on the radio. I wore maternity slacks and a barrel-shaped blouse sent to me from Abby. The outfit was comfortable, but the mountain in its middle made by heavy tucking along the bodice was so large the person filling it could still get lost. Maternity clothes. In the doctor's office waiting room, I'd noticed how frilly they tended to be—bows at the collar, smocking on the bodice, tiny prints on the fabric, almost as if intended for children and not for grown women. My body was so altered that it motivated me to fix my face and hair. I put on a bit of makeup for the first time in weeks, and I dampened my hair and put it up in pincurls until it was time to go. As I eventually emerged from the bathroom, Ray looked up at me for a moment, and in that brief second, I saw it again, that look of love he wanted so badly to hide.

At Martha‘s, we ate together and listened to the radio election news. The result was never in question, however. Roosevelt already had a big lead in both the popular vote and electoral votes, and after those one-sided results started to pour in, we could relax and simply bask in the victory. The surprising element of the election was that Roosevelt had replaced Vice President Henry Wallace with an unfamiliar senator from Missouri named Harry Truman, who would become the new Vice President. And to my satisfaction, an amendment to the state constitution that would've prevented Japanese aliens from owning land had been turned down.

Hank and Ray sat on the divan and talked farm business again. I was amazed as they went on and on. Farmers talked about their fields the same way women talked about their families. The seasons, the soil, and even the business side were discussed like the acts of moody and adored children. Hank and Ray started in on the price controls placed on farm crops during the war and their hopes that after the rationing period ended, they would be able to charge whatever they wanted. Martha could see that I was weary of that talk, so she brought out the old box of Singleton memorabilia for us to forage.