Someplace to Call Home

by Sandra Dallas

  Sometimes strangers thought she was from the town, and they stopped and asked her about work. Their cars were as worn out as the Turners’ Model T. Usually it was the man who asked. Occasionally it was a tired-faced woman, holding a baby who was whining from the heat and dust. The back seat was often filled with kids. Their faces were as dirty as their clothes. Even the children had a look of despair. Hallie knew she and her brothers had looked like this before they met the Carlsons. She hated telling people that she didn’t know of any work. The man would nod and say, “Thank you just the same.” If he hadn’t given up hope, he might swear under his breath. More often, he nodded. He’d known before he asked what the answer would be. Then the car would lumber off down the road. Hallie would thank her lucky stars that Tom had work and they had a place to live. In the back of her mind, however, was the thought that at any time, their luck could turn. They, too, could be back on the road, headed for California.

  Now as Hallie and Tom stared at the old Chevrolet, the man got out and lifted the hood and unscrewed the radiator cap. Steam poured out, and he jumped back. He kicked a tire that was low. The man seemed to be too tired to put much effort into the kick. He slowly walked toward the garage. His overalls were ragged and dirty, and his shoulders sagged. He looked defeated by life. The woman and children watched him.

  “Say, mister, I got a problem with my wheel. I’d sure appreciate it if you could take a look,” the man told Tom.

  Hallie winced when the man called Tom “mister.” He was probably twenty years older than Tom.

  “I got to be honest. I don’t have no money to pay you with.”

  Tom looked at Mr. Ulman, who shrugged. “Go ahead. We don’t charge to look.”

  “Seems like you could use water in that radiator, too,” Tom said, picking up a watering can. “Is the tire flat?”

  “I hope that’s all. A couple of young fellows come roaring by me a minute ago. Real nice car they had, a convertible. I swerved to miss them and went in the ditch. The tire pret’ near blowed, and I think the wheel’s maybe wrenched.”

  “Can you pull it over here?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, sir. I think that tire’ll make it. I sure do appreciate it.” The man held out his hand. “Name’s Trigg. Curtis Trigg.”

  “Tom Turner.”

  “I’m Benny.”

  “Well, hello there, squirt.” Mr. Trigg smiled for the first time. Then he turned to Tom. “We knew Turners in Oklahoma.”

  “We’re from Oklahoma,” Hallie spoke up. “Near Cookietown.”

  Mr. Trigg looked surprised. “That’s where we hail from, north of it a bit.”

  His wife had gotten out of the car and walked across the road, her children behind her. “I knew a Mrs. Selena Turner that’s went to the church. I was there once or twice but Pa didn’t take to it,” she said.

  “That’s our mother,” Hallie told her.

  “I heard of a Trigg boy. He was older than me, maybe twenty,” Tom said.

  “That’d be our Charlie. He’s gone now, went off to California. We ain’t heard from him since we got dusted out. Ain’t heard from the other kids neither. We got two more boys that went off. But we got three young ones with us. That’s Etta and Jim, and I got the baby. We ain’t named him yet.”

  “You looking for a job?” Mr. Ulman asked Mr. Trigg.

  “You said it, mister. We heard there’s work over west of here. That’s where we’re headed. You know anything about that?”

  Both Tom and Mr. Ulman shook their heads.

  “Maybe we’ll go on to California, that is if old Betsy here can make it.” When Tom looked puzzled, the man said, “Betsy. That’s what we call this flivver.”

  “We were on our way to California when we stopped here,” Hallie told Mrs. Trigg. “We’re staying for a while.” She added, “We hope.”

  Mr. Trigg went back across the road, started the car, and pulled it into the station. Hallie could see that the tire was low. “It needs a patch, all right,” Tom said. From the looks of it, the patch would have to go on top of another patch, Hallie thought. She wondered how long it would be before the tire simply gave out.

  Tom crawled under the car to check on the wheel. Mrs. Trigg went inside the station, her children following after her. She found a broom and began sweeping the floor. “If we can’t pay you, at least we can clean up a little. You got some rags and a bucket? Me and Etta will wash the window,” Mrs. Trigg told Mr. Ulman. Hallie and Benny stood in the doorway, watching.

  Mr. Ulman shook his head. “You don’t have—”

  “No, sir. We pay our way the best we can. Come on, kids. We’ll scrub the floor, too.”

  The children were young, younger than Benny, but they pitched in. In a minute, Benny said, “I’ll help. I’m a good helper.” He found a rag and wiped it across a chair. Hallie picked up a scrub brush and started on the grime on the door.

  “I think I remember your mama. She’s a right nice woman. Pretty, too, plump as cotton,” Mrs. Trigg said.

  “She got thin.”

  “Well, who hasn’t?” Mrs. Trigg asked. “How’s she doing?”

  Hallie scrubbed hard at the door and didn’t answer for a moment. “She died before we left.”

  Mrs. Trigg stopped washing the window and looked at Hallie. “I’m real sorry for that. I’d of gone to her service if I’d of knowed. We lost two of ours. I couldn’t hardly stand to stay in the house after that. I’d look over at where they slept and forget for a minute they weren’t there. I didn’t mind so much later on that we got dusted out.” She was silent for a moment, then smiled. “I guess we got to forget the sorrow and look at what we got.”

  Like what? Hallie wanted to ask, but she didn’t. After all, there were things to be grateful for, she thought, looking at Benny. He was rubbing his dirty dust rag over the top of the papers on a table, leaving them smudged.

  She smiled at her brother, who looked up and said, “I’m helping, Hallie.”

  “He’s a worker,” Mrs. Trigg said.

  Hallie liked the woman. She seemed hardworking and friendly, and none of the Triggs had asked what was wrong with Benny. “We’d be proud to have you stay for supper,” Hallie said suddenly. “We live in a cabin down the road. We don’t have much, but we’d be glad to share.”

  “Ain’t nobody asked us to supper since we left,” the woman said. “We’d be mighty glad for it.”

  Tom came into the office then and said the wheel was all right. The only problem was the tire. He could patch it, but . . . He shook his head. When Hallie told him she’d invited the Triggs for supper, he nodded his approval. “I was thinking the same,” he said.

  Hallie told them she’d go on home, then, and start supper. Just before she left, Mr. Ulman came into the station office. “I’ve went to the mercantile. I thought your kids might like this,” he said. He handed Mrs. Trigg a box of Cracker Jack.

  Mrs. Trigg examined every inch of the Turners’ cabin. “I always thought a curtain made a window look pretty. Look how the sunlight comes through it,” she said, fingering the fabric. She admired the pots and pans and dishes on the bureau. She gently touched the china bowl that had belonged to Mommy. “I used to have such. I had to leave them behind,” she said. “They’d be broke if I hadn’t.”

  She ran her hand over the iron bedstead that had been in the cabin when the Turners moved in and sighed. “My, to sleep in a real bed again.”

  Mommy’s blue-and-white quilt hanging on the wall really caught her eye, however. “The finest I ever seen,” she said. She examined her hand to make sure it was clean. Then she ran it over the quilt. “Was there ever a woman couldn’t help but touch a piece of material?”

  “You quilt, Mrs. Trigg?” Hallie asked.

  “My yes, girl. You want to see? Etta, go get Mama’s New York Beauty and them from the car.”

  The little girl ran out and returned with an armful of quilts. She held them carefully.

  “I couldn’t leave them behind,” Mrs. Trigg said,
spreading them out on the bed.

  Hallie still didn’t know much about quilts, but she could see these were almost as well made as Mommy’s.

  “You quilt, too, do you?” Mrs. Trigg asked.

  “I’m just learning,” Hallie replied. “Our neighbor, Mrs. Carlson, is teaching me.”

  “Then you are in for a lifetime of pleasures.”

  Hallie ran her hand over Mrs. Trigg’s New York Beauty. It was made mostly from feed sacks. She touched a yellow square.

  “I knowed you’d see that. I bought it at the store, a whole yard of it. It’s the best quality there is, and it cost me a quarter. Imagine spending all that money on material. Back then, I didn’t give it a thought. Now I could sure use that quarter. Still . . .” Her voice drifted off, and Hallie knew that Mrs. Trigg was glad she actually had the fabric. “I still got a little piece of it left. On a bad day, it makes me happy to see it.”

  Hallie went back to preparing supper. As usual there were beans and corn bread, but she had tomatoes and lettuce and fresh milk from the Carlsons. She’d expected the vegetables to last a week, but she didn’t mind sharing them with the Triggs. There were apples, too. ‘A’ for ‘apple pie,’ Hallie thought, as she cut up the apples and set them into a crust.

  When all was ready, both families took their plates out into the yard because there wasn’t enough room for all of them at the table. Mr. Trigg asked the blessing. Then everyone ate quickly, not talking until they were done.

  “’Bout the best supper I ever ate,” Mr. Trigg said, using a piece of corn bread to wipe his plate.

  “We ain’t ate like this since I can’t remember,” Mrs. Trigg said. “You folks sure have been good to us.”

  Hallie exchanged a glance with Tom. They were both proud that with Tom’s earnings, they could afford to buy good food—and to share it with others.

  After Etta and Mrs. Trigg helped Hallie wash the dishes, Tom said the Triggs were welcome to stay the night. He pointed to the spot where he and Hallie and Benny had first camped. “I stopped by the Carlsons’ on the way home, and they said it was all right.”

  “We can’t thank you folks enough,” Mr. Trigg said. “You and Mr. Ulman. Like the Bible says, you taken us in when we was hungry.”

  Tom had persuaded Mr. Ulman to give the Triggs a used tire that had been lying behind the garage. It was old, but it was better than the one Tom had patched.

  Tom and Benny, along with Mr. Trigg and his boy, set up the Trigg tent. As soon as it was dark, they all went to bed.

  In the morning, the Triggs were gone.

  “Why did they leave so early? I was going to fix them breakfast,” Hallie said.

  “They didn’t want to be beholden,” Tom told her. “They left the place clean as a whistle. You’d never know anybody was camped here.”

  Benny was disappointed the children were gone. He called to them and said, “Don’t hide.” Then he went over to a tree and removed something hanging from a branch. “Look, Hallie. They forgot.” He handed her a piece of yellow fabric.

  “Mrs. Trigg sure will be sorry she forgot that,” Tom said.

  Hallie took the fabric from Benny and shook her head. “Mrs. Trigg didn’t forget. She left it on purpose. Giving us her fabric is her way of thanking us.”

  chapter nine

  Ragman

  “No school,” Benny said when Hallie walked him home from the Carlsons’ farm one afternoon late in the fall.

  “You’re right. There’s no school tomorrow,” Hallie told him.

  “No school. No more school.” He stopped to pick a dried flower, then held it out to Hallie. She reached for it. Benny pulled it back and began plucking the flower strands and throwing them into the wind.

  “You love school, Benny.”

  “No!” he shouted, then ran ahead of Hallie down the road.

  She caught up with him. “What are you talking about, Benny? Don’t you want to go back to school? Did something happen today?”

  “I saw Bob,” Benny told her.

  “You saw Bob at school?”

  “No. That’s stupid.”

  Benny never used that word because he knew it was cruel. Now he stamped his foot in frustration when Hallie didn’t understand him. “No school!” he said.

  Hallie had rarely seen her little brother angry. He got frustrated with himself sometimes. That was usually when he couldn’t perform a task he’d set out to do. He rarely was angry at other people. Now he was mad, and Hallie didn’t understand why.

  “Look! Bob!” he called, forgetting for a moment that he was upset. He pointed to the bushes. Hallie didn’t see a rabbit. “Where’s Bob?” Hallie asked.

  “There, stupid!”

  “Benny!” Hallie said. “That’s a bad word.” He never before had called her stupid.

  “Tessie’s stupid,” he said.

  “Tessie’s your friend.”

  “No,” Benny said. “Not my friend.”

  “Did you have a fight?” Hallie asked. Mrs. Carlson had said nothing about a falling-out between the two. In fact, Mrs. Carlson was pleased that both children had recognized the letters on a set of alphabet blocks she had purchased at the general store.

  Benny didn’t answer. When Hallie asked him again, he said, “Don’t talk.”

  By the time they reached home, Benny didn’t say anything more about Tessie and their school. Hallie hoped that he had forgotten why he was upset. When Tom arrived, he asked Benny how school had gone, and Benny, angry, said only, “No.”

  “What happened?” Tom asked Hallie.

  She shook her head. “I can’t get it out of him. He’ll probably forget whatever it was. So let’s not remind him.”

  They didn’t talk about school or about Tessie until bedtime. As they knelt beside the bed for prayers, Hallie told Benny to ask God to keep Tessie and the Carlsons safe. “No,” he said.

  “Why not.”

  “Tessie likes Ragman. Ragman’s stupid.”

  “Who’s Ragman?”

  “Ragman,” was all Benny would say.

  “Ragman?” Tom asked when Hallie told him what Benny had said. “Do you suppose Ragman is some hobo? I haven’t seen anyone snooping around the place, and Mr. Carlson hasn’t hired anybody besides me.”

  “Maybe he’s a relative. Does Tessie have any cousins?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. I’m sure Benny will forget by tomorrow.”

  Hallie wasn’t sure. She’d never seen Benny so agitated.

  She was right. In the morning, the little boy was still in a dark mood. He banged his spoon against the table and said he didn’t like corn bread. Hallie tried to talk to him, but he refused to say what was wrong. Something surely had happened at his school the day before. Hallie couldn’t imagine what, though. The idea of teaching the children together had been a wonderful one. Benny and Tessie learned from each other, and Mrs. Carlson’s watching over Benny allowed Hallie herself to go to school. The two children had gotten along and everything seemed to be working so well that Hallie no longer worried about not completing eighth grade. If Benny refused to go to school, however, Hallie would have to drop out. She had to find out what was wrong with him.

  Tom stayed home with his brother the next day, so after school Hallie stopped by the Carlson place. She told Mrs. Carlson about Benny. “Did Benny have a fight with Tessie?” Hallie asked.

  “Not that I know of. They always get along so well together,” Mrs. Carlson replied. “If they did have a disagreement, Tessie didn’t say anything.” She called the little girl into the room. “Did you play with Benny yesterday?”

  Tessie frowned, then said she couldn’t remember.

  “Benny doesn’t want to have school anymore,” Mrs. Carlson told her daughter.

  “Okay,” Tessie said. She was singing to a doll that her mother had made for her and didn’t pay attention to either Mrs. Carlson or Hallie.

  “Was Benny mean to you?” Hallie asked.

  “I like Benny.”

  Halli
e was quiet for a moment, trying to remember what Benny had said. Then she asked, “Who’s Ragman?”

  “Ragman?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  “Benny said something about Ragman. He said that Tessie liked him.”

  Mrs. Carlson shook her head. “There’s been nobody by that name here. In fact, there’s been nobody here at all.” She frowned. “We get tramps sometimes. Do you suppose . . .” She drew in her breath. “I try to never let her out of my sight.” Then she turned to her daughter and asked gently, “Tessie, have you seen a man around here?”

  “Tom,” Tessie replied.

  “Another man, a man we don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Would she remember?” Hallie asked.

  “She might not.” Mrs. Carlson shook her head. “If someone had been here, he must be gone by now. I’ll ask Mr. Carlson to watch out for anybody trespassing, although he does so already.”

  “I hate to think somebody was scaring Benny,” Hallie said.

  “What about those visitors you had? You don’t think . . .?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  “They pulled out days ago. We haven’t seen a trace of them since. Besides, they were real nice folks.”

  “From now on, we’ll keep a sharp watch. I surely do not like the idea there is a stranger around.” She thought a minute, then asked, “Do you think Benny made him up? I know sometimes he talks about a Bob.”

  Hallie laughed. “Bob was our rabbit. Every time he sees a rabbit, he thinks it’s Bob.”

  Mrs. Carlson laughed, too. “That explains that. I always wondered.” Then she asked, “Do you think there’s a connection between Bob and Ragman?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Mrs. Carlson had been kneading bread dough. She used her hands to push the dough back and forth on the oilcloth-covered table. She added flour when the dough began to stick. When she finished, she punched down the dough with her fist, then dropped it into an oiled bowl. She covered the bowl with a damp towel. The day was muggy, and she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving streaks of flour. “Dough rises funny on a damp day like this,” she said. “How’s your cook stove work for bread?”