Then There Were Five (17 page)

They were nice. Sixteen sealed jars of scarlet fruit, upside down on the kitchen table.

“Cuffy will be glad.”

Mona nodded. They each sank into a chair; stared at their creations with the fond gloating of misers. Even as they stared and gloated another jar exploded. Hot tomatoes flew about the kitchen like larks, and so did bits of glass. Randy got a cut on the collarbone and Mona got a tomato in the eye.

At that very moment Mr. Titus appeared at the door.

To his everlasting credit, and the eternal gratitude of Mona and Randy, he didn't laugh at the spectacle confronting him. He didn't even smile. He just stood there, holding his shredded straw hat in his hand and said, “Thought maybe you might be able to use a helper. I knocked at the door and then I hollered. Guess you was too busy to hear.”

“Mr. Titus, you're an answer to prayer.” Mona was half in tears, and her eye hurt. “The flak around here is something fierce.”

Randy gave Mr. Titus a hug. “Next to Father I'd rather see Cuffy, and next to Cuffy I'd rather see you come in here right now than anybody in the whole world.”

Mona took his hat. Randy flew for one of Cuffy's big checked aprons; and in a little while the kitchen had turned from a cave of chaos to an orderly, efficient place. The tomatoes quieted down and allowed themselves to be canned submissively. They knew their master.

By six o'clock, in addition to three dozen perfect jars of tomatoes, there was a good supper cooking on the stove. Mr. Titus declined their invitation to stay and share it with them.

“No, thanks just the same. Got to get home. Got to feed Hambone. But I'll be by tomorrow. Around half past eight, maybe? Then we'll polish off the resta them tomatoes and get to work on the cukes. Dill pickles, maybe. I got some dill. And piccalilli and pin-money and mustard pickles. M-m, makes my mouth smart just to talk about it. I sure like pickles.”

Rush watched Mr. Titus leave with awe. Then he turned and looked at his sisters for a moment.

“Women's territory, eh?” said he.

But even Rush knew better than to rub it in.

CHAPTER XI

“Welcome Cuffy”

The canning, like everything but beginner's luck, improved with practice. It also proceeded at fever pitch, since Cuffy was expected home on Saturday. The males of the Melendy household had a dreary five days of it, being hustled through breakfast, forgotten at lunch, and given any old thing for supper.

Daily at eight-thirty Mr. Titus arrived and presided over the culinary rites like an aproned Buddha. Randy and Mona, his handmaidens, peeled and washed vegetable after vegetable; hovered about the stove till their cheeks were crimson, opened the oven door and frowned in at the contents, lifted the lid of the enormous boiler on top of the stove releasing great steaming fogs; and gradually on every hand appeared the result of their labors. Jars upon jars of tomatoes, of tomato juice, and yellow tomato preserves. Jars of dill pickles and of India relish. While the fever was on them the girls spent their pocket money (and whatever they could wheedle out of Rush and Oliver) on crates of peaches and plums, and put up quarts of each. Intoxicated by the great sacks of extra canning sugar which Cuffy had stocked, they went even farther; experimenting with jams and conserves.

Each morning they got up early, eager to be at work. Each night they staggered upstairs glassy-eyed with fatigue, the kitchen clock ticking loudly under Mona's arm. Upon its dial its shocked hands might be pointing at anything from nine o'clock to quarter to eleven. Promises to Cuffy concerning early retiring were temporarily suspended.

“After all, it's what they call an essential industry,” Mona justified it to Randy.

“Well, maybe the vegetables and the fruit. But plum and apple conserve? And blackberry jam? Do you think they'd be called essential?” Randy was tired. She was going upstairs on all fours like a dog.

“Yes, I do,” replied Mona firmly, and that was that.

On Friday night they finished. Mr. Titus went home with six assorted quarts in a basket and the lifelong gratitude and devotion of Mona and Randy credited to his account.

That night, the alarm clock stayed in the kitchen and kept its mouth shut in the early morning. Mona and Randy slept the well-deserved sleep of hard workers, and in spite of the gagged alarm clock woke from force of habit at six-fifteen and stayed awake. When Mona, shoes in hand, crept down the stairs to the kitchen she found Randy there before her, sitting on the high stool in her blue pajamas and yawning, while an egg bubbled and hissed in the frying pan.

“I wonder if we're going to keep on waking up at dawn like this for the rest of our lives,” said Mona.

“I like it. The day feels so unused.”

Sunshine lay against the wall in pinkish bands, and out of doors a late-nesting wren sang its bubbling clear song.

Mona got an egg for herself. Pausing on her way back to the stove she looked out the window. The dew was so heavy on the grass that all the lawn was coated lightly with silver. There was blue in the shadows and Willy's sunflowers were hanging their heavy yellow heads; if they had had faces they would have looked like the flame-fringed suns in old Russian fairy tales.

“Summer's almost over,” sighed Mona.

“Oh, don't say it. Don't say it! I don't want it ever to end.”

“Neither do I. But it will; and in the middle of September I'll be working on the radio again.”

Mona couldn't help smiling as she pried her egg loose from the pan. It would be fun to go back to work. To be acting again, to know again the exciting blend of make-believe and reality. To study anew the art of her profession; to work, and learn, and try to make a perfect thing of the part she played. Yes, and to be flattered a little once more. Mona's vanity rose and arched itself like a small cat, purring in anticipation.

Randy was eating her breakfast looking gloomily at nothing. She hated to part with each passing moment; and now, in the realization that it was nearly over, the summer gained a poignant value. How had it slipped away, carelessly expended, gloriously wasted? She had planned to try to make perfume out of honeysuckle and rose petals; and now it was too late. The honeysuckle was over long ago. She had been going to learn all the different bird songs. But now almost every bird had stopped singing. When had they stopped?

“Well, I'm not going to waste any more of it!”

“H-m-m?” said Mona, still smiling. She was thinking about her fan mail.

“Ow!” she exclaimed indignantly a second later. “The bacon spat at me. Ouch. I've got a burn on my wrist. Where's the soda, Ran?” Once more chance circumstance had given a tweak to her vanity.

“What aren't you going to waste any more of?” she asked, patting soda and water on her offended wrist.

“The summer,” Randy explained. “I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and remember about August. I'm going to dry a big bunch of pennyroyal so I can break pieces off all winter and think of summer. I'm going to look at everything, and smell everything, and listen to everything so I'll never never forget—”

“You know what Cuffy tells you, Randy, whenever you begin hating to have things change, something about the way ‘blessings brighten as they take their flight!'”

“But why shouldn't they?” argued Randy. “If they didn't brighten just when you're about to lose them you'd never appreciate them. You'd just live from one day to another, not knowing or caring about anything, like—like a turnip.”

“Turnips care deeply about many things,” remarked Rush, appearing suddenly. “Turnips are strongly emotional vegetables; and anyway what's Randy doing recommending change when she always says she hates it?”

Randy, baffled, retired from the field.

“I don't know, Rush, I'm all mixed up. You're too smart for me.”

“Maybe I ought to get a job with the Quiz Kids,” said Rush thoughtfully, and he began assembling his favorite breakfast; the one he always ate when Cuffy wasn't there to stop him. First he ate a large bowlful of Grape-Nuts with brown sugar, cream, and a sliced peach. Then he made a sandwich out of two thick slices of toast, butter, marmalade, and bacon. Then he made another, adding peanut butter for variety.

“Where's Mark? Where's Oliver?”

“Mark was in the shower when I came down,” Rush said. “He spends hours in the shower; he can't get over it. I suppose it's because he never saw one before. Oliver's still asleep, the little slug. Mr. Titus coming again today?”

“No, we're all through canning.”

“Halleluiah!” said Rush. “Now we can take up the broken threads of our lives once more, and eat a good, hot dinner in the middle of the day.”

“But look at the job we've done, will you?” cried Randy. “Just
look
at it, Rush. We've left it all out for Cuffy to see!”

Rush nodded slowly. “It's something!” he agreed.

It was something. The quart jars were arranged on the shelves, and the windowsills, where the light could best reveal their amber, purple, and vermilion splendor. In front of the quarts stood the pints; filled with pickles and preserves.

“How beautiful they are,” sighed Randy. “I hate to think of eating them.”

“Not me,” Rush said. “I can hardly wait for winter.”

“I wonder where Mark will be this winter,” remarked Mona. “I wish Father would come home and decide things.”

“I wish he would, too. And I wish Mark could just go on staying with us forever,” said Randy wholeheartedly.

“He's a swell guy, all right,” agreed Rush. “He knows more about the names and habits of plants and animals and things than anybody I ever saw. Did you know that grouse like to bury themselves in the snow in wintertime, for instance? Did you know that a bee dies after he stings you? And that there's a star called Aldebaran? And that around the tenth of August, any year, you can look up at the sky at night and see dozens and dozens of shooting stars? Have you ever seen a plant eat an insect? I have, right in Bagget's pasture, in the boggy place. Have you ever seen a dragonfly grub? Or a geode? Did you even know there
was
such a thing as a geode? I didn't, either. I learned about all those things from Mark.”

“Maybe
he
ought to join the Quiz Kids,” Mona said wickedly. “I'd like him even if he couldn't tell all about bugs and things. I just like him because he's nice, and doesn't think he's smart the way some people do. He's good, without being too good, you know, and kind of sensible but fun, too.”

“Sh-sh, here he comes,” warned Rush. “He'd hate to hear all the slush we've been talking about him.”

Mark came in, scrubbed and shining. Mona broke another egg into the pan.

“Gee, I'm late,” Mark said. “Half past seven! I never ate breakfast so late in my life!”

“I hope you're not getting soft,” Rush said.

“It's the farm I'm thinking about. Farmers can't afford to sleep late.”

“Or to fool around in luxurious shower baths half the day,” added Rush, and Mark reached across the table and almost succeeded in pushing his face into the marmalade.

For the last four days Mark had been spending a large part of his time at Oren's farm trying to keep up with the work. Willy helped him when he could, and so did Rush and Herb Joyner. When it came time to cut and stack the field corn and do other heavy jobs there would, of course, be still more volunteers; but even so the work was hard and demanding and continuous. Mark said little about it, but the Melendys sensed his underlying feeling of anxiety and responsibility.

“I certainly do
wish
Father would come home,” Mona repeated, almost angrily. “I bet the President of the United States, and Congress, and everyone, could figure things out by themselves for a couple of days. Just for a couple of days! If they'd just let him come home for a mere, simple weekend!”

“Mo-na!” called a rumpled voice from somewhere upstairs. “I can't find my snee-kers!”

“Oh, dear,” cried Mona, as she ran out of the kitchen. “They're probably outdoors, soaked with dew, or they've fallen into the brook or something.”

After breakfast Rush and Mark departed for Oren's farm. Oliver went to the garden and Mona and Randy set about cleaning house so that it would look nice for Cuffy.

“It's terrible what a state the place got into while we were canning,” groaned Mona. She had her hair tied up in a towel, and was wearing one of Cuffy's aprons wrapped around twice, and she looked awful. “How do you suppose people do it? Real housewives with children and all?”

Randy shook her head, at a loss. “When I grow up I'm going to be a famous painter and dancer, and live in a hotel.”