Authors: Marie Bostwick
Fields Of Gold (17 page)
“Oh yes,” Mama affirmed confidently. “Old James Tetley, you remember him, he lived over in Hooker? Fell roofing his barn and was dead the second he hit the ground, and that barn wasn't near as high as Clarence said these trees were. Really, he'd have never felt a thing.”
“Tell me more,” Ruby demanded, and so Mama did, recounting the stories of every man who'd fallen to his death from a height of more than fifteen feet for the previous twenty years. Down and down they tumbled, over and over, from grain elevators, ridgepoles, and church steeples, all of them meeting the ground stone dead and past their pain. The way Mama described it, it sounded like
the
way to meet your end. Ruby listened intently to each story until, seemingly satisfied, she said she'd better go pack if she was to make the westbound train.
the
way to meet your end. Ruby listened intently to each story until, seemingly satisfied, she said she'd better go pack if she was to make the westbound train.
When she left the room I whispered urgently to Mama, who was ironing a stack of handkerchiefs to include in Ruby's luggage, “What in the world was that all about? Have you both lost your minds? Worrying about the price of telegrams and a bunch of farmers who were pitched to their deaths when it's
her
husband who's gone? What kind of questions were those?”
her
husband who's gone? What kind of questions were those?”
“Eva, people act strange in strange situations. There is really no way to predict what someone will do in a time of loss. Weak people become strong and strong people become weak. It doesn't get any stranger than this; a man comes to the door and hands you a piece of paper, and because he does, your husband is dead. Now you tell me, how does your mind make room for something like that?”
I shrugged helplessly. It was impossible to understand. Clarence had been dead for hours? Days? And yet, until she read the telegram, he'd been alive for Ruby and for all of us. Shouldn't we have known?
“I don't know,” I admitted. “How can you make any sense of it?”
“Well, unless you're crazy as a bedbug, you hang on to whatever little shreds of good news you can salvage from the situation, like being absolutely certain that people who fall from great heights don't suffer. It's not much, but it's something to hold on to. Ruby's not crazy, she's just trying to hang on to what little comfort is left to her. Under the circumstances, it may have been the only sane question for her to ask.”
Â
The money Clarence had sent to Ruby over the years, hoarded in dollars and quarters and dimes, hidden in thick white envelopes of letters, was just enough to pay for Ruby's fare to Oregon to bring the body home and for the funeral. The logging company offered to pay for a burial in Oregon, but Ruby refused.
“He went without new shoes and lunches to save up money so we could be together again someday,” Ruby said. “That's what I'm going to use it for, to bring him home.”
She traveled alone because no one could afford to make the trip with her. At the train station in Portland, Oregon, she was met by two men from the logging company who took her to a room where a rough pine coffin was waiting. One of the men lifted the lid so Ruby could confirm that the man inside was her husband, though she told me later that the body inside didn't look anything like the Clarence she remembered. “I only recognized him by the scar just under his right ear where he got cut on some barbed-wire when he was little, a jagged white mark, like a lightning bolt. We were married close to six years, and I loved him, but that's the only part of him I knew by sight. How could that be?”
After the coffin was closed, some porters helped load it into the baggage car of the train that had just brought Ruby west. The men from the logging company tipped the porters a quarter each, shook hands with Ruby, and said they were real sorry about Clarence, that he was a good worker and a good man. “The taller man, I guess he was the boss,” Ruby said later, “he handed me an envelope with the last of Clay's pay plus some money he said the fellows had collected to give me. Forty-two dollars and thirty-five cents. Then they said they had to be getting back up the mountain to the job site.
“I went and sat in the coffee shop and waited for six hours while they got the train ready to turn around and head east. I spent the thirty-five cents on coffee and a ham sandwich, but I wasn't really hungry. Just figured I had to buy something so I could sit in the restaurant and kill time before it was time to leave. That's all I ever saw of Oregon, the coffee shop in Union Station.”
Papa and I hitched Ranger up to the old hay wagon, and we all went to meet Ruby's train, which had actually come in a few minutes early. Ruby was calmly supervising the unloading of the coffin when we arrived. We loaded the casket into the wagonbed and drove directly to the cemetery. Papa had arranged everything while Ruby was gone. Pastor Wilder met us there to say a short service next to the open grave. After he was done, the coffin was lowered into the ground while Ruby stood by, tearless and steady, to make sure the hole was filled in properly. The next day she asked Papa to drive her into town to order a marker.
Papa told me she spent almost the whole forty-two dollars on the headstone. “Nothing fancy, but she insisted that it be granite. âThe best you can get,' she told the stonemason, âand engrave the letters extra deep. I want it to last.'”
I was amazed by her strength. We sat on the porch steps after supper that night, Ruby watching fireflies and me watching Ruby smoke cigarettes one after another. “How can you be holding up so well?” I wondered. “It's all right to grieve, you know. No one will think the worse of you.”
She looked at me sadly and said, “I grieved when he left, remember? Something told me then he wasn't coming back, even though I tried to pretend I was wrong. Sometimes I even came near to believing it, but deep down the truth was always there.”
She twined a lock of hair absentmindedly around her finger and stared off in the distance, remembering that day so long ago. “When he walked down the road, I cried and waited to die, but nothing happened, so I got up and went on with life. Funny, that's what people always say you should do when someone you love dies, that the dear departed wouldn't want you to grieve, and then, when you take their advice, they look at you like you've lost your mind.”
“Oh no, Ruby!” I cried putting my arm around her, “I didn't mean it like that.”
“I know. You're worried about me, that's all. It's just that I think it makes good sense. Clarence wouldn't want me to sit around pining and sobbing.” She tossed her cigarette butt into the dirt and ground it out with the toe of her shoe, then leaned forward and hugged her legs with both arms, resting her chin on her knees and staring out at evening sky. It was such an unconscious and childlike pose, I was suddenly reminded of how young she really was; we both were. “Besides,” she continued, “I don't think I have any tears left; I used them up so long ago. It must look odd to you.”
“No,” I assured her. “Not at all. I've never had a husband. How could I pretend to know how you should feel? I just want to make sure you're not trying to be tough and hold it all in. You don't have to go around being brave on my account.”
“Or you for me, Eva,” she said, looking at me pointedly. “Husband or no, we've been in the same boat for a long time, two women who loved their men and got left behind with just a few mementos to remind us that any of it was real in the first place. You've got a son with a face like his father's, and that seems pretty concrete, but all I've got is a shoebox full of letters and a ring I can see whenever I look down at my hands.” She was quiet for a long moment, studying the plain gold band on her left hand as though trying to remember just what it had to do with her.
“Eva,” she asked, finally breaking the silence, “do you even remember what it was like when Slim was here? Doesn't it all seem like a dream sometimes? He was here for a day or two and everything changed. It must have been like blinking in daylight and opening your eyes to find that the sun had set. Now we're both alone. Clarence has gone to his reward, and Slim's gone to Europe. That's an awful long way,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Did he ever write to say good-bye?”
I shook my head no. Ruby exhaled a cloud of disgust. “And you're worried about how I'm holding up? I might ask you the same question.”
I shrugged at her concern. “I'm fine. Nothing has really changed. He left me behind a long time ago. Europe is just geography. If he lived in the next county, we'd be just as far apart. When you think about it, this shouldn't bother me any more than the rest of it.”
Ruby searched my face, and without meaning to, I shifted my gaze away from hers. “But it does,” she said.
“Yes,” I admitted. “For all the difference it makes.”
Ruby sighed. “We are some sorry pair, aren't we? Guess that's what makes us such good friends.” She laughed sarcastically. “Wouldn't it be awful to be this miserable all by yourself?”
Chapter 12
I
t was ironic that the only faint ray of hope we had that year came while Ruby had gone to bring home Clarence's body.
t was ironic that the only faint ray of hope we had that year came while Ruby had gone to bring home Clarence's body.
Papa got a job. He was hired by an absent landowner to list his fields for him, cutting deep furrows that were theoretically supposed to keep the soil from blowing away, though I couldn't see that they helped much. The pay was poor and the work was hard, but it was a job. At the time, it seemed like Papa's salvation had come just in the nick of time.
Before Papa got work, the wind seemed to be sucking away slivers of his spirit day by day every bit as ferociously as it consumed our fields, steadily and methodically, as though it wouldn't be satisfied until Papa was eroded completely, powdered fine and scattered across the plains. His shoulders stooped, and he never whistled anymore. He'd stopped reading to Morgan in the evenings and spent more time alone in the barn. He said he was working, but he just puttered, honing the blade of his scythe over and over again, making it sharper than ever before and every day a bit thinner and smaller, just like Papa himself. It was hard to mark the difference from one day to the next; you sensed rather than saw a gradual diminishing.
Then he got work. Overnight he was one of the luckiest men in town, and he looked it. I could hear him padding around the kitchen before dawn, humming to himself as he ground coffee and clanked the lid of the donut jar optimistically. Though he coughed more than before, I didn't worry. He was actually plowing those drought-stricken fields, stirring up the dust and swallowing it in every breath, but he looked so well and beamed with such purpose that I never questioned what it might be doing to him. None of us did.
Things were going so well, no one wanted to speculate on how long it would last. Every Saturday for two months, Papa brought home a plain manila envelope containing his pay minus whatever he'd spent to bring home a few groceries from Dwyer's. It wasn't much, but it meant everything to Papa, and we were all thrilled to see him acting like himself again. When he brought home something extra one Saturday, it seemed like the clock was actually turning backward and Papa was younger than ever.
A section of the land Papa was working had some old train cars sitting abandoned on the property. Mr. Ashton, the bank manager who was serving as trustee for the owner, wanted them moved off and gave Papa permission to have them hauled over to our place, anywhere as long as they weren't on his client's property. Before the week was out they were parked out next to our barn, a rusted freight car and a caboose scoured so hard by the winds and dust that the paint had been stripped off as clean as if somebody had used sandpaper.
“And just what do you think we need with some old, filthy train cars?” Mama asked, obviously less than pleased with Papa's new acquisitions. “Look at them cluttering up the yard! People will think we're living on a scrap heap.”
“You'll see,” he said with a grin. “When I'm done you'll be so surprised that you'll apologize for doubting me. Morgan!” he shouted heartily. “Get my toolbox and get over here. The men in this family have work to do.”
“Yes, sir!” Morgan replied and ran off to find the tools while Papa rolled up his sleeves and strode, whistling, to inspect the cars.
“The men of the family. Hmmph.” Mama shook her head and chuckled tolerantly.
For weeks on end the sound of scraping, hammering, and sawing filled our ears. Morgan and Papa spent all their spare time on the project, only coming inside to sleep and eat before they were back at it again. It was a happy, purposeful time; three months passed quicker than three weeks used to before Papa had started working. Using part of his small salary and whatever they could salvage from abandoned farms around the county, Papa and Morgan worked magic.
One day they made us close our eyes while they led us by our hands to see what all that hammering and sawing had wrought.
“One, two, three,” Papa and Morgan counted together. Morgan shouted out the final command: “Open your eyes!”
It was amazing. The caboose had been turned into a private and cozy little apartment all its own. It was really nothing more than a tiny sitting room connected by a hallway to an alcove for the bedroom and closet, but it was just as cunning and complete as it could be.
“It's for you, Ruby,” Papa said, smiling. “It's small, but it's yours.”
Ruby was speechless, not daring to believe, I suppose, that such a perfect little space was really meant for her alone. Somehow Papa and Morgan had managed to sneak into our room and spirit Ruby's own quilt off her bed and into the caboose without anyone noticing. It looked clean and crisp on the new bed. The bedroom had just enough space for the bed, Ruby's rocker, and a shiny black wood-stove that would keep everything warm as toast in winter. The walls were a warm brick color, mounted with two gleaming brass oil lamps that gave off a clear, bright light. Everything was so tidy and clever. Ruby, who had been stoic and strong throughout the aftermath of Clarence's death, suddenly burst into tears.
“Now don't go doing that, Aunt Ruby,” Morgan squeezed her arm while Papa fished in his pocket for a clean handkerchief to offer the sobbing Ruby. “We can paint it a different color if you don't like this one.” Morgan laughed. “You just say the word and we'll break out the paintbrushes, but there's no need to cry about it.”
“I'm sorry,” Ruby wailed. “It's just so beautiful. You've all been so good to me, and now that Clarence is gone I'm more of a burden than ever. I can't even pay you the three dollars a week for my keep anymore, and you all go and do this!” She broke into a fresh stream of tears, bawling louder than before and trumpeting her nose into Papa's handkerchief.
“Don't be silly,” I said, patting her on the back. “You saved my quilting business. We couldn't manage without you.”
“That's right,” Mama agreed. “If you didn't help with all the cutting, we'd never be able to make quilts up fast enough to make any money. With the arthritis in my hands, I'm not as much help as I used to be. Anyway, you're family now.”
That only made Ruby cry harder, but we could all tell they were the good kind of tears, the sort of release you just have to have now and then if for no other reason than to know that some things can still touch you down deep.
“That's enough of that, Aunt Ruby,” Morgan said gamely. “You haven't even seen the best part yet.” He led the way toward the old freight car and pushed open the door with a strength and enthusiasm that reminded me he wasn't a little boy anymore. Thirteen years old, practically grown up. We all followed him inside. The freight car had been cleaned and shelved with row upon row of chicken coops and roosts. Papa grinned from ear to ear as Morgan gave the tour. We all admired their handiwork. Everything was planned out so cleverly. I told Morgan it looked beautiful and wondered how he ever thought of raising chickens.
“It was all his idea.” Papa beamed, winking and pointing to Morgan. “And he did almost all the carpentry by himself, too.”
“I read about what you need to farm chickens in my Four-H handbook,” Morgan said proudly. “Once we got a place to keep them, the rest was easy. I've even figured out a design for an incubator for baby chicks. Works with a light bulb. Now all we need are the chickens!”
Ruby sniffed away the last of her tears. “I'll take care of that,” she said. “How many do you need to start?”
“Oh no, Ruby,” Papa holding up his hands in protest. “We couldn't let you do that.”
“Mr. Glennon, I've got a little money left over from Clay's funeral and I'm buying chickens with it,” she said in a voice that would brook no argument, the stream of tears suddenly blocked. “You've given me a home here with you, and now you've even built a place I can call my own. It's little enough for me to do by way of thanking you. I'm sure if Clay were here he'd agree with me. Besides, if I really am family, why shouldn't I help?”
And so it was agreed. Morgan and Ruby would go into town the next day and buy enough baby chicks to start a real flock. Though it would be months before we had hens laying and eggs to sell, when we sat down to our small supper that night it was like old times, with everyone laughing and talking at once. Papa was himself again, presiding over the table with the confidence of a man who is sure of his usefulness in the world. Morgan kept chattering excitedly about pullets and cockerels and even drew out a diagram of his new incubator invention. Mama, Ruby, and I studied it with genuine admiration.
I couldn't help but think that Slim would be so very proud of his son, a chip off the old block, his mechanical mind already seeing things that other people missed and turning his ambitions into plans. I resolved to start writing him about Morgan, forwarding the letters to his lawyers in the hope that he'd read them. I wouldn't mention anything about myself, just about our boy. He had a right to know about his own son. His son had a right to be known. The idea warmed me inside.
For myself, I was through with love, through with Slim Lindbergh, but where Morgan was concerned things were different. They were still father and son. Surely there was a happily ever after for Morgan.
Morgan felt my eyes on him, admiring him, and got up from his place at the dinner table to come and kiss me on the cheek. It was a good day. The best we'd had in a long, long time and the best we would have for a long time after. For a moment, we really believed the worst had passed. Is it better sometimes not to know what's coming?
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