Someplace to Call Home

by Sandra Dallas

  “That’s great. Mr. Carlson wants me to help him two days a week. He’ll pay a dollar a day. He gave me a cartwheel for working today.” Tom held out a silver dollar.

  “Mr. Carlson’s honest,” Hallie said. “Still, I’m glad he’ll pay you each time you work there.” The month before, Tom had worked for a man who’d promised to pay him a dollar a day for five days’ work, but later gave him only three. He said he was charging him for camping on his property.

  “How was Mrs. Carlson?” Tom asked.

  “We worked hard, but I didn’t mind. Tom, I never knew about cleaning such a house. She has a carpet sweeper instead of a broom. It picks up dirt when you run it over a rug. When I washed her windows, I didn’t use soap and water. Instead, she had me clean them with what she calls ammonia. When I was done, the glass just sparkled. She sprinkles Old Dutch cleanser on cooking pans. The burned places just come right off. You don’t even have to scrape them. Can you imagine?” Hallie shook her head. “They sure are rich.”

  “You’re not resentful, are you? Even rich folks are having a hard time of it.”

  “Well, they’re better off than we are.”

  “That’s about right.”

  Hallie wondered if Tom was correct about her being resentful. Was she? Of course she was. It wasn’t just the fancy stove and the carpet, the radio and the starched curtains. No, it was that the Carlsons had a home, a real home. The three of them had a house with beds and a kitchen table where they ate their meals. They didn’t sleep on the ground. Nor did they cook their food over a campfire. Nobody was going to tell them to move along when they weren’t needed anymore.

  Still, she wasn’t real jealous of them. Mrs. Carlson had been kind. She’d fixed ham sandwiches for everyone for dinner. Hallie had taken them along with a jug of water to Tom and Mr. Carlson in the field. When she returned, Mrs. Carlson had put a pretty tablecloth over the table. She had set china plates on it. Benny’s bouquet of weeds sat in a glass of water at the center of the table. The sandwiches were the best Hallie had ever eaten, made with soft store-bought bread. There were two left over. Mrs. Carlson had insisted Hallie take them home for supper.

  “How long are they going to let us camp here?” Hallie asked her brother.

  Tom shrugged. “Mr. Carlson didn’t say. But he didn’t say we had to move on, either. I guess we can live here as long as he needs us.”

  “If he pays you two dollars a week, you’ll have that new transmission in no time.”

  “Yeah, if we don’t have to eat or buy clothes. Benny’s grown out of his shoes. Yours are almost worn out.”

  “Other farmers might hire you when they see what a worker you are.”

  “We’ll see. Mr. Carlson said he’ll put my name out. He also said I should try at the garage in town, see if they need a mechanic. If they do, they’ll probably hire somebody local, I’m afraid. People think of us as squatters. Still, I’ll ask.”

  “Maybe we can stay here for a while, then.”

  “We’ll have to move on before the weather turns. We can’t live in a tent in the winter again or sleep in the car.” They had left Oklahoma in the winter and had suffered from the cold. Benny had cried from it. Hallie knew she couldn’t let the little boy go through that again. Perhaps they should go to California after all. It was August and hot weather. They wouldn’t have to move on for a couple of months. In the meantime, she hoped they could stay on the Carlson land.

  Hallie had been thinking about the Carlson house. She did not pay attention to the road until she turned to see a cloud of dust behind them and a car moving fast. Benny was squatting in the middle of the road with his stick. “Benny!” she called. Tom, too, spotted the auto and sprinted toward the little boy, grabbing him up.

  The car screeched to a halt. It was a fancy car, a cream-colored convertible with big headlights on the front. Two boys about Tom’s age were inside.

  “You all right?” the passenger asked.

  “Going pretty fast, aren’t you?” Tom was angry.

  “You better watch out, then.” The driver studied Tom a moment. “You new around here? I haven’t seen you before.”

  “We work for the Carlsons,” Hallie spoke up.

  “Squatters?”

  She flinched. “Farmworkers.”

  “Taking jobs from local folks.”

  “Leave them alone, Harold,” the second boy said. “They can’t help it. They’re just trying to make it, like everybody else.”

  “Yeah,” Harold said. “Times are hard. Still, jobs ought to go to the people who live here.”

  “I have a stick.” Benny came up to the car.

  “It’s bigger than you are,” Harold laughed. He stared at Benny. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” Hallie and Tom said together.

  “Look at him, Dan. You ever see somebody that stupid-looking.”

  “Don’t say ‘stupid,’” Benny said.

  “Don’t tell me what to say.”

  “Oh, come on, Harold. He’s just a kid. Leave him alone,” Dan said.

  “Yeah,” Harold agreed. “Let’s go.” He gave Tom a curt nod and gunned the engine, then drove off, leaving a cloud of dust behind them.

  “They’re jerks, but that’s a pretty nice car,” Hallie said.

  “It’s an Essex Terraplane Deluxe Eight. I saw one like it in Oklahoma City. It costs more money than we’ll make in a year—in ten years.”

  “I don’t like him. He could have hit Benny.”

  “I guess it really wasn’t his fault. We have to watch Benny when we’re on the road.”

  Hallie nodded. They had to watch Benny wherever he was.

  One evening a couple of weeks later, a black car stopped on the road near where the Turners were camped. Hallie felt uneasy and wondered if the car meant trouble. Then the back door opened. Tessie jumped out. “Hi, Benny,” she called.

  “Hi, Tessie. We have a fire. Be careful.” He pointed to the coals in the fire circle, which was made of rocks.

  “I’m careful.”

  The front doors of the car opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Carlson got out. Hallie had taken Benny to the Carlson place several times. Once she had helped Mrs. Carlson bottle tomatoes. Mrs. Carlson had given her four quarts of them. So they were eating red soup again. It wasn’t so bad now, though, because Mrs. Carlson also sent them home with cake and a loaf of bread. She said the bread would get moldy in the heat if they didn’t eat it.

  Now Mr. Carlson said, “We have something to tell you.”

  Hallie glanced at Tom. He was staring at Mr. Carlson. She thought her brother was thinking the same thing she was: What if the Carlsons were there to tell them they didn’t need the Turners anymore? Maybe Mr. Carlson would say it was time for them to move on. Hallie dug her toe into the dirt. She turned to see what Benny and Tessie were doing. Benny was showing his friend his boat and warning her to be careful of the water in the creek that ran by the camp.

  Mrs. Carlson glanced at Tessie and Benny, too. Then she said, “I brought you something.” She handed Hallie a glass jar. “Plum jam. My neighbor gave it to me, but we don’t care for it. I hope you like it better than we do.”

  Hallie thanked her. She knew the Carlsons wouldn’t drive down to the camp just to deliver a jar of jam, however.

  Mr. Carlson cleared his throat, and Hallie tensed. Tom was chewing on his lip, which he did when he was nervous.

  “The thing is, nobody’s using it, so you might as well.”

  Hallie didn’t understand. Was that his way of telling them they were no longer wanted?

  “Sir?” Tom asked.

  “You don’t have to, of course. I’ll understand if you say no.”

  Tom frowned. “What’s that?”

  “The old hired man’s cabin. I was thinking it ought to be tore down and the land planted, but that don’t make sense now, what with the prices I’m getting for crops. I’ll get rid of it when things are better. Nobody’s been there for a long time. It might not even b
e livable. You can move in there if you want to. Hot as it is now, it still won’t be long before winter. If you’re thinking of staying on for a time, you might as well take a look at it.”

  “Of course, you might not want to stay in Kansas more than another month or two. We understand that, too,” Mrs. Carlson said. “Sometimes I wish myself I was in California.”

  Hallie wasn’t sure she had heard right. “The cabin?” she asked.

  “Oh, I told Mr. Carlson we might be insulting you by offering it. It’s awful worn down. For all I know, it’s got raccoons living in it. The place will take a powerful lot of cleaning, but you don’t seem to mind cleaning,” she said. “We worry about you living in a tent come winter—especially Benny.”

  “You’re offering us the cabin?” Tom asked. He and Hallie looked at each other. They couldn’t believe it.

  “We can call it a loan,” Mr. Carlson said. “Like I say, I was fixing on tearing it down one of these days on account of I can’t afford a full-time hired man. Until prices pick up, I’ll leave it alone. Last time I looked, it wasn’t too bad. There’s a glass window. I boarded it up so’s nobody would break it.”

  “We saw the cabin was there. We sure do thank you, Mr. Carlson,” Tom said, holding out his hand. The two shook.

  “Don’t thank him till you’ve seen it,” Mrs. Carlson told him. “We can take a look at it now.” She called Tessie, who held Benny’s hand as the group walked through the woods to the cabin.

  Mr. Carlson had brought along a crowbar. He and Tom pried the boards off the door and the window. The glass in the window was cracked, but it wasn’t broken out. Tom and Mr. Carlson went inside first. Mr. Carlson came out looking relieved. “I was afraid maybe squat—that is, hobos might have got inside and tore it up, but it looks all right.”

  Hallie pushed past her brother and looked at the interior. There was an iron bedstead with rusted springs, a lopsided bureau missing two legs, and a broken chair. At one end was a stone fireplace. Hallie thought how nice it would be to use the fireplace instead of a campfire for cooking. “We’ll have to check and make sure the stack’s tight before you use it,” Mr. Carlson said. “Wouldn’t want to fill up the room with smoke.”

  “It’s a house,” Benny said.

  “Now you can live inside,” Tessie told him.

  “Okay.”

  Mrs. Carlson inspected the place, then told Hallie, “Like I said, it needs cleaning. Some boards need tacking up. The floor’s still good. I think I’ve got some old curtains. They’re faded, but they’ll do till you get better. And we have an extra kerosene lamp. Tom can haul out that old bed and springs if you don’t want them.”

  “Oh, no. I want them. I’ve never slept in a bed before.”

  Mrs. Carlson looked surprised but said nothing. She and Hallie inspected the cabin. Hallie made a note of what had to be done. “I’ll start cleaning in the morning,” Hallie said.

  “I’ll come down later with a few things,” Mrs. Carlson told her. “You’ll need a broom and soap and cleaning rags.”

  The Carlsons went back to their car. Tom and Hallie walked beside them.

  “We sure do thank you,” Tom said.

  Benny and Tessie played tag in the warm dusk, and the others stood and talked for a moment, enjoying the breeze. After a time, they heard a car coming down the road. Hallie turned to see Harold driving the Terraplane.

  Harold slowed when he saw them and yelled, “Evening, Mr. and Mrs. Carlson!” He ignored Tom and Hallie.

  “That’s Harold Morton. Where do you suppose he got that fancy car?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  “From his daddy. Mr. Morton spoils Harold as bad as sour milk,” Mr. Carlson replied. Then he turned to Tom. “He thinks too high of himself. I advise you to stay clear of him.”

  “We met him already,” Hallie said.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  The Carlsons left then. Tom and Hallie watched them drive away. “Mr. and Mrs. Carlson sure are nice folks, but I don’t like that fellow Harold,” Tom said.

  “Me neither,” Hallie replied. “Do you think he’ll cause us trouble?”

  Tom shrugged. “Probably not. I bet he thinks we’re not worth it.”

  Hallie wasn’t so sure. Since they had left Oklahoma, they had met a few nice people, like the Carlsons and the woman who’d given them the buttermilk. They’d met mean ones, too. She wondered how other people in the area would treat them. For a moment, she felt prickly with the worry of it. Then she turned her thoughts to the cabin. It was rickety, but it was better than the tent. For the first time since they left Cookietown, they would sleep under a roof.

  “Let’s get to work,” Mrs. Carlson said when she arrived early the next morning at the Turners’ campsite. Tessie had come, too. They brought a broom, a mop, two pails, soap, and ammonia, along with other cleaning supplies. Hallie started to take them from her, but Mrs. Carlson said, “Not on your life. You don’t think I’m going to leave you with that filthy place to clean by yourself, do you? This is a job for the two of us.”

  Hallie looked at her in surprise, then grinned. “I can’t pay you twenty-five cents.”

  Mrs. Carlson laughed. “It’s what neighbors do. Now let’s get started. I told Mr. Carlson he and Tom would find their dinner in the refrigerator.” This was one of Tom’s days to work for Mr. Carlson. “I brought ours along with me.” She led the way to the cabin, with Hallie, Benny, and Tessie following behind.

  “I can sweep,” Tessie said, swiping the broom across the leaves.

  “Me too,” Benny said.

  Inside the cabin, Mrs. Carlson put her hands on her hips. “Worse than I thought in the dark last night,” she said. “Let’s clear it out.”

  The four of them dragged boxes of moldy clothes, broken dishes, old newspapers, and pots with rusted-out bottoms to the campsite’s fireplace circle. “I’ll tackle the window,” Mrs. Carlson said. The window was covered with so much grime that the daylight couldn’t come through. When the window was clean, the sun shone into the cabin.

  “I’ll clean the burnt sticks and ashes out of the fireplace and scrub it,” Hallie told her.

  “We’re sweeping,” Tessie said. She and Benny took turns with the broom until they both were covered with dust. While Hallie stood on the bedsprings to wipe the dirt and cobwebs from the ceiling, Mrs. Carlson scrubbed the walls. Then they washed the bureau and propped it up on blocks of wood.

  They finished the cleaning by noon, then sat by the stream to eat the dinner Mrs. Carlson had brought. “I surely do thank you,” Hallie said.

  “Oh, we’re not through yet. Now that we’ve done the dirty work, we have the fun part. We’ll make up beds and unpack your boxes and put things away.” So the four of them dismantled the camp and carried everything but the tent to the cabin. They spread one of the mattresses on the springs and put the other on the floor. “Who gets the bed?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  “I do,” Benny replied.

  “I guess we’ll take turns, Benny,” Hallie said.

  “Okay.”

  They spread the quilts on top of the mattresses, then started putting the Turners’ belongings away. They lined the bureau drawers with newspaper and placed the clothes in the drawers. Then they arranged the tin dishes and pots on top of the bureau. Finally, Mrs. Carlson took out a pair of curtains she had brought and nailed them to the window. She stood back and looked at the room and nodded. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s better than it was. And like the man says, it’ll keep the rain out.”

  “We’re not done,” Hallie told her. She went to the last box and took out a quilt. It was white with tiny blue squares in a crisscross design.

  “An Irish Chain,” Mrs. Carlson murmured. “Oh my. It’s as fine a quilt as I ever saw. Did you make it?”

  Hallie shook her head. “Mommy did. It was her prize quilt. We gave away most of her other quilts when we left Oklahoma, but I couldn’t leave this one.” The two of them nailed the quilt to the wall over the bed.
r />   Mrs. Carlson pinched a corner of the quilt between her fingers. “I never saw such fine stitches.”

  “Mommy was the best quilter in the county. Everybody said so,” Hallie told her.

  “This would win a prize all right. Did she teach you?”

  “I never cared much for quilting, but I’m sorry now I didn’t learn.”

  Mrs. Carlson thought that over. “I could teach you. It’s not hard. I could show you next time you bring Benny to play. I’d rather quilt than eat pie.”

  “I’d like that,” Hallie said, “although I’d rather eat pie than quilt.”

  chapter four

  Happy Days

  By fall, the Turners had been living on the Carlson farm for several weeks, and it looked as if they might stay on in the cabin for a time. One day, Hallie walked into town with Benny. They had made the mile walk before to go to the mercantile or to meet Tom. He worked two days a week now at the garage and filling station.

  Tom hadn’t expected to get the job. After all, there were local boys who wanted to work at the garage, and he was an outsider. The day he applied, however, Mr. Ulman, who owned the garage, had the hood up on a car. He was peering inside and shook his head when Tom walked in. “I’ll hire you if you can tell me what’s wrong with this engine,” he said.

  He’d meant it as a joke. He hadn’t really expected Tom to figure out the problem. To Mr. Ulman’s surprise, Tom had ducked his head under the hood and tinkered a moment. Then he pointed to what was wrong. He worked on the engine a few minutes and fixed it.

  “I been studying on that car for two days and ain’t figured it out, and you did it in five minutes,” Mr. Ulman said. “By Jove, boy, if you want that job, it’s yours. I’ll give you work two days a week and pay you a dollar and a quarter.”

  “Mr. Carlson pays me a dollar a day,” Tom said, holding his breath for fear Mr. Ulman would think he was greedy.