Winter Wheat (8 page)

“Did she live in Russia?” Mrs. Borden asked.

“Oh, yes, she was born there. My father met her during the war.”

“How interesting! John, did you know that Ellen’s mother was Russian?”

“Yes, my dear, Ellen told us that before,” Dr. Borden said in his mild humorous way.

“That’s what gives Ellen those high cheekbones and that light hair,” Gil said, looking up from his drawing. He was doing a head of me, but he wouldn’t let me see it until it was finished.

“I think of Russian people as being dark. They’re a picturesque people,” Mrs. Borden said.

“And a people of tremendous courage and endurance,” Dr. Borden added.

I gave Gil a picture of myself, the one I had had taken for high-school commencement, but he said it was terrible. He gave me his, all wrapped up, under the Christmas tree. It looks as though he were just sitting talking to me. He has a cigarette in one hand and the little thread of smoke shows in the picture. His white shirt is open at the neck and his head is thrown back the way he does when he likes something. I wish, though, that he were smiling in it. His eyes and mouth have a sober look and he isn’t looking right at me.

Before Dr. and Mrs. Borden left us that night we drank a toast to Christmas and to Peace on Earth in wine that Dr. Borden poured into tiny glasses, and then Mrs. Borden lifted hers again and said, smiling at both of us:

“To your happiness!”

I couldn’t get my breath for an instant. I felt that Mrs. Borden was waiting for us to say something, but I could only look into the fire. Then Gil laughed and said:

“Well, thanks, Mother!” He said it so offhandedly it hurt me.

After they had gone we sat down on the rug in front of the hearth. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the room. I was waiting for Gil.

“You’re so quiet, Ellen,” he said at last.

I smiled at him. That wasn’t saying anything, really. He leaned over and kissed me.

“Do you love me, Ellen?” he whispered.

“You know I do, Gil,” I whispered back, but I wondered how he could ask.

“I love you, too.” The room was comfortable again. “Will you marry me, Ellen?”

I said, “Yes, Gil,” out loud.

“Of course, with my going into the Army there’s no use trying to make definite plans, but it will be wonderful to know you’re waiting for me,” he said, playing with my hair. The words seemed too much like someone else’s, but I guess I was just crazy. People have to use the same words, but sometimes the words seem to belong to a person and sometimes not. I would have married him the next day if he had wanted me to.

“Only knowing each other a couple of months is a pretty short time, I suppose,” Gil said.

I hadn’t thought of Time at all. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with it.

“I mean, most people know each other longer than that. Do you think we know each other well enough, Ellen?” Of course he was asking it in fun, but his voice sounded worried.

“Well enough to know we love each other,” I said. I felt so sure. I couldn’t pretend about a thing like that.

“You’re wonderful, Ellen.” Gil kissed me.

“I’m going to tell the family tomorrow.” Gil sounded suddenly sure and so much happier, but I was startled.

“About us, Gil? I thought they knew. I thought that was what your mother meant.”

“I guess she hoped that. No, I told them I was crazy about you. I didn’t tell them we were engaged. We are now, did you know?”

“Yes, I know,” I repeated stupidly. “Maybe they aren’t asleep. Why don’t you go up and tell them?”

“Oh, no, I’ll wait till morning,” Gil said. “We want to keep it to ourselves that long.”

It was after two when Gil brought me back home, but I wasn’t tired. I started to write Dad and Mom, then I realized I’d already told them about Gil and me; I had told them two weeks ago.

It was funny to have spring come and not be running the tractor. I gave up the job in the cafeteria in the spring term and went to the job in the library. It worked out better with my studies and I knew Gil liked it better. He waited for me every evening, downstairs by the steps. Sometimes when I came out all I could see would be the burning tip of his cigarette, and a rush of joy would come up in me. I’d try to come up without his seeing me and then when I was right beside him, I’d say in a low voice as though I were surprised to find him there:

“Hello, Gil.”

“Hi, Ellen. Last one out, as usual!” I never could make him sound surprised.

We did so many things that spring. I went canoeing for the first time in my life. There can’t be anything more smooth and gentle than slipping through the water like that. It seemed as though it made up for all the dry summers at home. I didn’t know I loved water so much. I went to sleep some nights thinking of a lake with willows hanging over the edge, a lake right where we planted the crested wheat grass last spring. The ground slopes up from there like a shallow bowl. It could make a beautiful lake; only there isn’t a drop of water anywhere around!

We danced that spring, at the dances at Gil’s fraternity house, at the big Senior Ball, but I liked best going into the city for dinner alone with Gil and dancing afterward. Gil knew people; we were always running into them and they stopped to talk to us, but all the same we were alone. I had always loved to dance, but the dances around home always got rough after a while.

“We were meant to dance together,” Gil murmured when we were doing a fancy step without even touching our hands, his eyes on mine. I nodded, not wanting to talk, we danced so smoothly.

We were dancing on the roof of the hotel. Between dances we went out to see the night and lean against the high stone wall. It was close and hot down in the street. I knew how it would be in the rooming house, but up here a breeze blew my hair back from my face. It smelled fresh. I took a long breath. Last week, Dad wrote that they were going to plow if the ground ever softened up; that they’d miss me. Standing there with my thin skirt rippling against me and the big linen hat Vera made me buy, I wanted to be in jeans, sitting up on the seat of the tractor. We always work late at home spring evenings, it stays light so long. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I said to Gil:

“Mom says that in Russia the girls and boys dance out in the fields summer nights. After haying all day they go down to the river and bathe and then put on clean clothes they have brought with them and the girls braid poppies and daisies together and put them in their hair. Sometimes they dance all night. And they build big bonfires and dance around the fire and sing.”

That picture was something rare and bright I had to give to Gil. Mom is so stocky now, I had never been able to think of her as slim, and I had never seen her dance, but tonight I could think of her as dancing, feeling her body thin and good, following the music and her partner. I could see her with poppies around her neck and her dark hair brushed back and fastened with ribbons. She never wore it up on her head, she said, until she was married.

“How would they dance on rough ground like that?” Gil asked.

“Oh, they dance differently. Somebody’d play an accordion. There’s something about an accordion that won’t let you sit still.”

Gil laughed at that and said: “You’re part Russian after all. Here, let me tie a bandanna over your head and see how you’d look.” He took his big white handkerchief and folded it three-corner-wise and tied it under my chin. Then he tipped my chin up with one finger and kissed me.

The music began and we danced, still with Gil’s handkerchief tied over my head.

“I can’t wait to have you at home, Gil. June is wonderful in Montana; you must bring your drawing things.” I thought how green the prairie still was, and there’d be wild flowers, even the cactus blooms in June, and there’s a clear trickle of water in the creek bed. The seeding’s done and the hardest work hasn’t begun. It was a wonderful time for Gil to come home.

“What if your mother and father don’t like me?” Gil teased.

“They will. They couldn’t help it. They’re different from your family, you know, Gil. Dad isn’t so different, but Mom speaks with an accent and she’s very quiet and a little shy until she knows you.”

“Is she beautiful like you, Ellen?”

“She isn’t beautiful, but she’s . . . oh, you’ll have to see her, Gil.” And then I began to plan the things we’d do. “We’ll take the truck and drive up one of the canyons of the Rockies one day.”

“How far is that?” Gil asked.

“Not far—eighty miles, about.”

“I call that far.”

“Not in Montana. Distances are all great out there.”

And always we’d talk about the fall. “How about October, Ellen? I’ll have my commission then.”

“I’ll be back in school then.”

“But you could take a week off to come and see me, couldn’t you?” Gil teased.

“Oh, Gil . . .” He held me so tight and kissed me. We stood shoulder to shoulder, lip to lip. He looked taller because his hair waved back from his forehead. Mine was smooth and tight to my head.

“Gil, do you wish I were little?”

He laughed. “You’re wonderful as you are, Ellen.”

I loved him so much I couldn’t say anything at all, but I kept wanting him to talk. Afterward, I would remember every word and go back over it when I lay in bed and couldn’t get to sleep.

When I came back to my room there was a letter from Dad. The people and things he wrote about seemed far away. Mom had bought a hundred baby chicks in town. I could imagine how they cheeped all the way home in the truck, and without half trying I could see Mom fussing over the brooder out in the chicken house. The Hendersons were building a new granary. “The snowfall has been way under average; it had better be a wet June or there won’t be any crop,” Dad ended.

7

I WAS
home two weeks before Gil came. It seemed longer than that, though I was busy every minute. I had to tell Mom and Dad about him. I wanted them to know him so they wouldn’t be like strangers. I had his picture to show them. Dad liked him right away.

“He’s a handsome-looking chap,” Dad said. “So his mother and father knew Plainville, did they?” He was pleased by that.

Mom took the picture on the kitchen table and studied it so long that I said:

“Do you like him, Mom?”

“I have to see him first.”

“You’ll love him when you see him,” I told her, but I was disappointed with her and took the picture back into my room.

Everything looked beautiful to me. I went out to see if the wild flowers on the prairie were still in bloom. The grass wasn’t very green, but there were bright blue and yellow and pink patches. I went up on the rimrock and felt the sun and looked way off to the mountains. It was almost as though I told all the places I loved that I’d be back and bring Gil.

It had been a late spring. I helped plant the low field to wheat that week and I ran the harrow. It was so good to be out of a town and to wear only a shirt and a pair of jeans and sneakers.

“Better not let your young man see you like that,” Mom said.

“Why not?”

Mom shrugged. “He look to me like he want a girl dressed-up.”

“He’s not that way at all! He’ll have to see me in them.”

Monday afternoon I washed the windows. I wished we had curtains, but Mom didn’t like them. Her geraniums were in bloom by the sink and in the front room the windows were small and you didn’t seem to miss curtains so much. Dad let me take the truck to town and I bought stuff to cover his big chair that was through on the arms. I tried to find a soft green the color of the sage, but I could only get a deep blue-green that was the color of the wheat before it turns. Mom helped me make the slip cover and we got it done, but I’d rather run the tractor any day than sit at that old machine and treadle it. I waxed the linoleum rug and polished the brass strip that is nailed down around the edge. I brought a pale-green paper shade home from the ten-cent store and put it on the electric bulb in the center of the ceiling. I wished there were floor plugs so we could have a lamp.

Mom stood in the doorway and smiled. “You think he look at the house or you?”

It did seem silly. “I guess I just like to be doing things for him,” I said. Mom didn’t answer, so I looked over at her.

“You have love for him all right,” she said.

I brought back some white piqué from town and Mom made it into a dress for me. I didn’t want her to, I meant to make it myself; Mom is always out in the garden this time of year. She does all the work in it herself, but she is quicker than I am. The pattern had a red cross-stitch design to stamp around the skirt, but I wouldn’t bother with that till later.

“You don’t do the embroidery?” Mom asked.

“Not now. Maybe I will sometime,” I said. I was impatient for each day to be gone. I was at the post office before the mail was there each day. Bailey keeps the post office in the little building on the side of the elevator. The first day I was home I had the first letter from Gil. He wrote it on paper that had his family’s house number in little raised black letters like the pattern the printer sent for our high-school graduation announcements, the one we didn’t get because it was too expensive. Gil wrote:

My eyes skimmed over the words, just barely taking in the sense, hunting for other words. Then I found them and it was like coming to a water hole on the prairie.

I sat out on the ramp at the elevator and read and reread it. Bailey’s tiger cat come over and brushed against me as I sat there. Some of the words seemed as clear and shining as a pool of water. Then I wished I hadn’t thought they were like a pool. Out here the shallow pools that in June have ducks on them are dried up by August and look like nothing but the bottom of a burned saucepan. I liked best his saying the place was empty without me, and his looking for me in the library, and his last sentence. I put the letter in the pocket of my jeans and started back home. Mathews from the office in town drove up to the elevator.

“Hi!” I called out.

“Well, hello,” he said. “How’s college?”

“Swell,” I told him, but I kept right on going. I didn’t want to stop to talk to anyone.

Walking up toward our house from the elevator you can only see the top of the chimney above the coulee and the tops of the trees that grow in the coulee. I’ve always loved the way it was tucked down in. That was Dad’s idea. He wanted to get out of the wind and he liked the way there was some green shade in there. But as I came up today I almost wished it stood out bigger. I wished it were painted. The barn is painted, but the house is just the color of the earth that wind and rain and sun make everything if you give them a chance. If Gil didn’t like my brown hat, maybe he wouldn’t like the gray-brown house. Then I put the idea away hurriedly.

“When we are married . . .” Gil said. I went into the house with the paper for Dad, feeling somehow unreal.

“Did you hear from Gil?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s coming next Monday.” I loved just saying it.

I was up at six Monday morning. There was so much to do. Gil would have my room, and I had cleaned it till it shone. Mom had painted the floor while I was away. She had painted it a bright blue and calcimined the walls a peach color, so it was pretty bright, but the quilt Dad’s mother sent me once was a nice faded color. Mom says lots of things made in New England can’t stand Montana sun. I cleaned off the dresser and laid a clean towel on it and put clean towels on the closet door. Then I picked a bowl of wild flowers for the dresser, and because I had talked so much about the sage out here I picked some sage and put it in an old olive bottle on the window sill. The little icon still stood on its shelf on the wall.

I was going to sleep on the glider out on the porch. I loved sleeping out there anyway and Gil’s window would be just around the corner.

To think he’d be here tonight was such a joy I could hardly keep from singing. I stood in the doorway looking at the dining room. Dad had bought a fresh carton of cigarettes home for him and left it on the table. I took a couple of packages out and laid them on the two tables. I saw the tied-and-dyed plush scarf on the table as though I were seeing it for the first time. Somehow the long silky fringes seemed too gaudy to me today. I wondered if Mom would care if we had the table bare.

“Mom, where did we get this cover?” I asked.

Mom came to the door. She was fixing chickens so I could take a picnic lunch to eat halfway home.

“First fair we go to, I hit down a wooden Indian with a ball and get it for prize.”

I left it there. What if it was awfully bright? Gil wouldn’t notice it any more than I had until today.

While Gil was here we would eat in the front room. Mom wanted to have it all set, but I said I’d do it when I came. I had a big bowl of blue lupin in the center and the shades drawn halfway to keep the room cool. It was hot for June. Everybody wanted rain, except me. I wanted it to stay bright and clear for Gil.

While I was in school Dad had traded the pickup for a ton truck. Mom was proud of the truck. It would be fine for driving alongside the combine to load the wheat in and carry it to the elevator.

“Will you mind driving in for Gil in the truck?” Dad asked almost anxiously. I wondered why.

“Why, no,” I said.

“Do you suppose he’s driven in a truck before?” Dad said.

“I don’t know. He’ll like it anyway.”

I drove off at ten o’clock so I’d surely be there. Dad and Mom came out to watch me off. I could feel their love over me like warm sun.

“You look like a girl in love all right, doesn’t she, Anna?” Dad said, and Mom laughed.

I wore the gray linen dress Vera had picked out for me at school and I had my big hat in a bag in the truck to put on when I got out at the station, but I’d feel silly driving the truck with it on. The lunch and a thermos bottle of hot coffee and two bottles of coke were on the seat beside me. I knew just where we’d stop to eat by a creek where it was shady. I sang all the way to town. Nobody could hear me above the noise of the truck. Once in a while I’d tip the mirror so I could see how I looked.

And suddenly the train was there and Gil was coming down the train steps. In two weeks’ time I had forgotten how he looked.

“Oh, Gil!” I was so glad to see him I think I kissed him first.

“Ellen, it’s good to see you. Wait, I want to see to my bag.”

It was a beautiful bag, as soft and smooth-looking as a new saddle.

“Over here, Gil, in the truck.”

“Well, there’s certainly room!” Gil put it in back. I could see that he was worried for fear it would get scratched.

“I wish I’d brought a blanket to wrap it in,” I said. It hadn’t a scratch on it. Even as I looked at it, I was loving the initials G.H.B.—Gilbert Hinsley Borden.

“It looks as though it might get bracked in there. Maybe I better take it in front with me.”

I remember now how hot the seat was when we got back in. The lunch and the thermos bottle were on the seat between us.

“Can you drive this thing? It looks pretty big to me.”

I laughed. “It’s fun to drive a truck. Oh, Gil, I’m glad to see you.”

“I’m glad to see you. Minneapolis was dead as a doornail. By the way, Mother and Father sent their love to you.”

“Thank you. Give mine to them.”

“So this is Montana!” Gil said as we waited at the intersection of the main street for the bell to ring and the arm that said “GO” to bob up.

“Wait till you get beyond the town, that’s more . . . that’s my part.”

“We bumped over the approach to the bridge and my hat that I had put behind me came down. I had forgotten to wear it. Gil rescued it for me.

“Oh, Gil, I meant to wear it to meet you in. Did you notice I didn’t have a hat on?”

“You looked beautiful to me,” Gil said, and I loved the way his eyes looked at me. “You handle this truck with a professional hand.”

“I’ve been driving trucks since I was twelve, not on the highway, of course, but over the fields.”

“Did you get my letter?” Gil asked, though he knew I had because he had mine in answer.

“Yes. I loved it. I liked your looking in the library for me. Did you get mine?” I asked idiotically.

“Yes. Thanks for the piece of sage. I had never smelled any. It’s a little like catnip, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know catnip. When do you start training?”

“I passed the aviation exam all right, and they tell me to expect orders to report within two weeks, but don’t let’s talk about the Army. If we don’t get into the war, I’ll be discharged in twelve months and we can be married next June!”

We were driving over the uninteresting part just out of town, where the mountains are far away and the rimrock looks dry and baked in the sun, but today I blessed it with my eyes. “We’ll be married next June” sang in my head as I kept my eyes on the highway.

“That would be wonderful,” I said. “It seems a long time away now.”

We drove into the place I knew where willows and alders and aspens made a green shade along a brook. I wished again I’d brought a blanket. Gil’s suit was awfully light, but the earth was hard and gravelly there, not dirty.

“I’m not hungry. It’s only twelve-thirty—I could wait just as well,” Gil said.

“I know we could, but I thought it would be more fun. We’ve never had a picnic.”

“That’s so,” Gil said, but he didn’t sound enthusiastic. I was busy laying out the fried chicken on a linen napkin. I had thought he would love a picnic.

“This is in memory of Pop’s Place,” I said, handing him a bottle of coke that was a little warmish. He laughed at that and we had some of the feeling of Pop’s.

“I’d like to do a water color of you with that yellow-green shade on your face.”

“Those are aspens. I’ll sit under one at home for you.”

“I couldn’t get it. Just that light would take a Renoir or a Van Gogh. I just daub.”

“Why, that’s not so, Gil! You haven’t worked at it very long. Maybe you’ll be just as good some day.”

He shook his head. “Could be you’re in love!” And then he changed the subject as though it annoyed him. “Were you glad to get home?”

“Oh, yes, but it was so different, Gil, because I kept thinking of you all the time. I had no idea how it would change things—loving you, I mean.”

“It does that,” Gil said. “For me, too. I like it that way.”

I started to tell him how it changed things for me. That it made waking up in the morning and going to bed at night and the sun itself different, but Gil went on: