The Root Cellar (18 page)

They traveled the road for over a week, managing ten or twelve miles a day. Though the fields were dry and chewed up and sad, the distant hills were green and blue and glinting in the sunlight. Sometimes they passed through woods and surprised deer or raccoons, squirrels and chipmunks. The birds sang noisily. They always made Rose think of Will. Now and then the road dipped down into a valley to pursue its path almost by the river’s edge, and then the steady lapping of the water as its tides rose and fell was a kind of song to march to. Rose felt secure by the river. She knew she couldn’t get lost. The river would take her to New York.

It rained once or twice, but mostly they were dry, scorching days that burned their skin and blistered Rose’s feet. They slept in woods or fields, and washed in the river, in brooks and tiny streams. One night they sheltered from a thunderstorm in an old fishing shack by the river, huddled together against the bursts of white light that illuminated, then obscured, the black hills.

Sometimes they were lucky and found work and ate well. Other times they went to sleep hungry. They hoed gardens, washed windows, ran errands to earn twenty-five or fifty cents. Once they white-washed a hen house for a
dollar. More than once they held horses for pennies. Sometimes they got rides with kind farmers, but the rides were slow. Once they rode in a buggy with a pair of traveling players.

While their clothes grew thinner and dirtier and their shoes were dangerously worn, their bodies grew tough and sunburned. They learned to ask for work and to take abuse from strangers. Once Rose was chased by a gang of boys in a village who shouted and swore at her and threw ripe tomatoes. Once an old woman called them “thieving children” and threatened them with the county jail. Another time, passing through a town on a Saturday evening, Susan was bothered by a man who sidled up to her and offered to buy her a pretty dress if she would show him a good time. Rose was not taken unawares as she had been on the train in Albany. She came up behind him, poked her finger in his back, and threatened to shoot.

“I’m just out of the army,” she growled, “the toughest drummer boy in the 81st regiment.”

“Okay, son. Didn’t mean nothing by it.” The man slunk away.

“What made you think to say that?” Susan was full of relief and admiration.

“I remembered what Joe Haggerty said: ‘They’re all afraid of soldiers.’ And see, they are, even little ones.”

For the first time since Susan had found out about Rose spending the money, they had a real laugh together. They had patched over the trouble between them by not mentioning it, but it had not gone away. It was like a bandaged sore. Rose was aware every day that Susan did not feel the same way about her as she had on that morning that seemed so long ago when they had set out from Hawthorn Bay. She was polite, kind, and thoughtful, because that was what Susan was, but the companionship they had felt was missing. It was almost as though they had a job to do together (although they never mentioned that either) and, when that job was done, they would say good-bye to each other like two strangers.

One morning they washed in a small stream. Rose looked disgustedly at the remnants of her socks, two lengths of gray, tattered cloth. She stuffed them into the knot-hole of a tree.

“Even the robins won’t want to make nests out of them,” said Susan. “They can have my bonnet. It’s got almost as many holes as a sieve.” She tied the misshapen black straw to a branch. She looked ruefully down at her dress, by now grimy and thin. “Ain’t nothing much to be done about that.”

Rose’s jeans had holes in both knees and were crusty with dirt. She was so used to them she hardly noticed.

“Come on,” she said. “We
must
keep going.”

As the sun came up over the hills, they reached the edge of a small village whose signpost announced that it was called Dorland. Opposite was a little unpainted store in front of which stood a blacksmith shop. The shop was quiet and the smith was standing outside, his hands on his hips, looking very disgruntled.

“You, boy,” he called, when he caught sight of them coming along the road, “you want a job?” He was a squat, swarthy man with hairy arms and straight black hair, and a beard that almost hid his small tight mouth.

Rose crossed the road to stand beside him. “How much money?” she asked boldly.

He looked her up and down. “You’re pretty small,” he said. “Give you twenty-five cents a day and room and board.”

Rose went back to where Susan waited. “Twenty-five cents a day isn’t very much,” she whispered. “We’d only have a dollar and seventy-five cents at the end of a whole week. I’m not going to do it.” Susan nodded.

“No, thank you,” she called. They started on their way.

“Wait! Come here, boy. I can see you’re a bright little lad. Now if you was to work hard for me, I might see my way clear to give you a whole dollar.”

Rose looked at Susan. Susan said in a low voice, “If I could find work in th’village and earn the same, at the end of the week we’d have fourteen dollars and we could get back on the train all the way to Washington. I think you might better tell the man yes.”

“I’ll do it,” said Rose and, with those words, began the most miserable week she had ever spent in her life. While Susan went off up the road to look for work, Rose was led into the darkness of the blacksmith’s shop.

Her chief job was to wield the bellows so that the fire in the forge would burn hot enough for the smith to soften his horseshoes, wagon wheels, and plough points over it. The forge looked to Rose like a big, brick barbeque without a grill on top and with a hole in the side, just under the fire box, for the bellows to blow air through. The bellows was like a huge fan made of accordion folds of leather, attached at one end to the floor, with a large handle at the other end which the bellows boy was to pump vigorously up and down to drive the air that kept the fire roaring.

The shop was deep and close. Its only light came from the one door at the front and the red glowing fire. The two windows at either side were permanently shut and covered with black dust. It was only after her eyes had become used to the dark that Rose could see what else was
there besides the forge, the bellows, and the anvil on which the smith pounded the white hot metal into shape—the ringing of metal on metal deafening to the ears and the flying sparks frightening to watch. There were kegs toward the back, full of horseshoes and nails and spare bits of farm machinery. There were rings along one side wall for horses to be tied to while they were being shod. There was a bucket full of cold water, which Rose was required to cart from the well that stood just off to the east of the shop. The water was for quenching the hot metal when the smith was finished shaping it, and its sizzle and steam made the whole shop seem to Rose like descriptions she had read in books of torture chambers and dungeons.

Nor was the smith a friendly man. He said nothing all morning except to let loose a long stream of curses if something went wrong. He stopped once at midday and brought out a lunch of bread, lard, and cheese, of which he gave Rose a very small portion. He had a bottle of beer for himself. Rose had water from the well. The only thing he said to her as he was getting up from his lunch was “Too hot to work. Farmers be in all afternoon with their horses.” And they were, from early afternoon until the shadows grew long. They stood around outside and looked curiously at Rose but no one spoke to her, while Peter Maas
(Rose learned that that was his name by listening to the men) poked the horseshoes into the glowing coals with his long tongs and she pumped furiously at the bellows, feeling sure, at first, that her arms would fall off, and then growing so numb she hardly cared.

When evening came at last, Peter Maas put down his hammers and left the forge.

“Stay by until the fire dies,” he growled and stumped off up the lane to his shack. Rose didn’t know what to do. She was very hungry and so tired she was almost falling over. She waited by the fire. Peter Maas did not come back. She heard voices from the village, but no one came near the blacksmith shop. There was no sign of Susan. The fire died down. She fell asleep, her back against the front of the shop.

When she woke, the sun was coming up over the distant hills. She got up, drank at the well, and splashed water on her face. She stretched her tired legs and almost cried with the stiff pain in her arms. She was dizzy with hunger.

“A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she told herself grimly, and that refrain kept her going for the rest of the terrible week. Peter Maas came down from his house early that first morning.

“Here, boy,” he said (he never asked her name nor told her his), and gave her another slice of the thick brown bread with lard on it. He
started work at once and stopped only for his brief lunch. That night he told Rose, “There’s a bed in behind the shop” and left her another slice of bread and lard. She slept on a narrow iron cot and sometimes dreamed of Sam or Aunt Nan or Grandmother, too tired to care where she was. “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she would murmur and fall asleep. “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she would tell herself as she was getting up. “A dollar a day will take us to New York,” she would chant to the rhythm of the bellows and the hammer on the anvil. The fourth evening Susan came. She was horrified to see Rose almost exhausted and covered with such black soot she looked as though she had been painted with stove black. She had had a chance to wash not only herself but her clothes and looked fresh and bright.

“Oh, Rose!” Susan was aghast. “You oughtn’t to be doing this.”

“A dollar a day will get us to New York,” said Rose tiredly. “How are you, Susan?”

“I ain’t so bad. I got work helping out where a hired girl’s took sick. I get fifty cents a day plus room and board. Is he feeding you good?”

Rose told Susan about the bread and lard. The next evening Susan came running up the road with a bundle under her arm. “I ain’t supposed to be out,” she whispered and ran off.

The bundle had in it some cheese, a tomato, a bit of cold beef, and a small jar of milk. Rose stared at the feast in disbelief. Then she gobbled it all up, stuffing food into her mouth like a ravenous dog.

Susan did not come again and Rose figured that she must have been in trouble for bringing the food. She ate bread and lard and the bit of noontime cheese, with the grateful memory of Susan’s meal, until the end of the week.

At the end of the week, when it came evening, Rose put down the bellows. “I’ve been here a week, Mr. Maas,” she said, “and I’m going to leave now. You owe me seven dollars.”

It took all the courage she had to stand up to that dour, bad-tempered man and ask for her money. The only reason she could do it was because the refrain “A dollar a day will take us to New York” had become so firmly lodged in her brain that it sang itself even while she was asking for her pay.

“Seven dollars!” Peter Maas gave a short laugh that sounded more like a terrier’s bark than a man’s laugh. “Seven dollars! Boy, I pay twenty-five cents a day. That’s what I told you when you come.”

Rose turned cold with anger. “You said if I worked hard you’d give me a dollar a day.”

“As I recall.…” Peter drew the words out slowly, his face lighting with the only humor
Rose had seen in him all week. “As I recall, I said if you worked real hard I might see my way clear to giving you a dollar. I didn’t say a dollar a day.” He chuckled, pulled a small roll of bills out of his pocket, and slowly took one off the top.

Rage blew up in Rose like a Roman candle, straight up and bursting with heat and speed. With no thought in her head but how she hated that ugly smile, she reached out and snatched the roll of bills from his hand and ran.

She heard horses’ hooves behind her, but she didn’t stop. She heard Peter Maas bellow, “Thief! Thief! Stop him!” She heard shouts and the sound of feet pounding after her on the road. She ran, her lungs nearly bursting, her legs pumping furiously; straight through the village she ran, down a side road, up a farmer’s lane, over a bridge, off up a slope and down the other side, where she stopped. Spent, she clung, like a burr to a blanket, to the side of the slope, a hunted animal gasping with long shuddering breaths. She heard the feet pounding after her, the sound hollow over the little bridge. Then, miraculously, she heard them continue on along the lane.

Her breath gradually slowed down. The sound of feet came back—and boys’ voices, loud and laughing, followed by the sound of horses’ hooves.

“Wouldn’t I give a good kick to have seen old Maas’s face when that feller stole his money!” said one.

“I just wish I had a share of it,” said another. “Only feller in the history of Dorland to get anything out of old Maas.”

Their voices faded as they disappeared in the direction of the village.

After a time, Rose peered out from behind her slope and there, standing perfectly still, was a horse and rider. She jumped back, looking frantically for a place to run to.

Before she could gather herself for flight, she heard a familiar voice say, “Upon my word, I believe it’s the little Canadian boy under all that pitch.”

Rose came out from behind the hill. The large dapple-gray horse was happily munching the leaves of a wild apple tree that grew beside the lane.

“Hello, Hermes,” she said. The horse looked up, whinnied, and went back to his meal.

“You’re a fine lad,” said the man, “a fine lad. I knew it the second I laid eyes on you. By Jove, yes I did.” And he began to laugh that amazing laugh that Rose remembered from their brief encounter outside Albany. Chortling, cackling, bellowing, hooting, absurd laughter that no one listening to could keep from laughing back at. So, rubbing black soot from the
corner of one eye, aching and sore, Rose laughed back.

“Heard the whole exchange, upon my word, heard it all,” said the man. “Splendid boy, how much did you lift?” And off he went into gales and whoops of laughter, slapping his thigh and rocking in his saddle—and all the while Hermes, unconcerned, ate away at the apple tree.

Rose looked down at the crumpled money she still had clutched in her hand. She smoothed out the bills and counted them—eleven one-dollar bills.