As soon as the sky was black, the wild dog began howling, the sound coming from the direction of the lake this time. Maybe he’d gone for a swim.
I wished that we could adopt him, but he’d probably grown too wild for that. Whenever I heard his crying, I remembered Roland saying, “He’s lost his people.” Before extinguishing the lamp, I wrote a quick note to Professor Cromwell, trying to describe the sound of the dog and how it made me feel.
“It has a hold on me, right down in my soul. The dog has been doing damage, ravaging animals—ducks and chickens and even small dogs—on the farms around here, but if someone kills him, and they will, the gods won’t be happy. That’s what I feel.”
When I brought up Dora’s breakfast tray the following morning, she waylaid me.
“I’ve been thinking.” She plucked at the sheet.
“What, again?” Setting the tray on the bed, I waited. I was always waiting for her to say something intelligent.
“I’ve been doing what you told me, thinking about what if something happened to Roland.” She paused. “I need to learn how to do things.”
“Yes.”
“What things?”
“How to cook? And bake, maybe?”
Her mouth turned downward at the thought.
“Would you rather start with laundry?”
“Isn’t there something pleasant?”
The timing of our plans was uncanny. The next day the doctor removed Dora’s casts. She was not altogether pleased by this new, if partial, freedom. I say “partial” because Dora had not been following the doctor’s order to exercise. Freedom was not what she longed for, I could see. A cage was what she longed for, like a pretty bird.
I had thought that she’d be eager to lose the casts. Now she could get to the window and even downstairs to check on Roland. But apparently she was torn between that and her reluctance to work. She was lazy and silly and childlike. Childlike must have been her appeal when Roland married her.
After I’d seen the doctor to his buggy, I climbed the stairs. “Now what?” I asked Dora. “Are you going to lie around or are you going to learn something? Make up your mind. Emma can’t do without me forever.”
• • •
Emma was crimping the crust of an apple pie before sliding it into the oven. In hot weather, she baked at night.
“Dora got the casts off today,” I told her.
She wiped floury hands on her apron, then mopped her face with a rag and sat down, heaving with exhaustion. “She’ll be weak as a kitten for some time. Roland’ll still need you. I miss you, but we’ll make do here a while longer.”
“I feel like I’m losing touch with you folks.”
“Don’t worry, little girl, you’re still my right hand.”
“When does Dennis leave?”
“Two-three weeks. We’ll have a little party before he goes. Us and them across the road.”
In bed, I tried to reach out to Serena, wherever she was. Some nights I talked to her and felt her listening. Tonight, I wanted to tell her about my conversations with Dora. But she wasn’t close. She came and went.
Toward morning, I dreamed I was climbing the roof of Roland’s barn and lost my grip at the top, falling, screaming. I landed on the floor beside my bed, and Dennis was there helping me back into bed and telling me it was just a dream.
But I was shaken and shivering despite the suffocating heat in the room. The sky in the east was pink and yellow and pearly. Four-thirty. I dressed and went down to the kitchen, thinking how kind Dennis had been. I hoped his father wouldn’t make him go into the newspaper business.
In the dim kitchen, I sat at the table, my mind back in the dusty farmyard on which I’d lain broken. As the sun tipped over the horizon, I saw two apple pies on the table, and also cookies piled on a platter. The amazing Emma.
I walked out to the yard and crossed to the barn, stumbling as I glanced up at its steep roof. Grabbing a stool from where it hung, I began milking the cows. The barn cats, hearing the ping of milk in the pail, came running.
This was a satisfying time of day, a satisfying occupation. Alone with the cats and cows, and while the others were dressing or coaxing the big stove to life, I could dream my waking dreams uninterrupted.
When I had finished, I opened the door to the pasture, backed the cows from their stanchions, and urged them out. It required little urging as they were eager to wend their unhurried way down to the cool, shady end.
Now I carried water to the garden, checking for slugs and aphids and beetles and mold. Second and even third crops of some vegetables renewed the need for vigilance. If I found a dying tomato plant, one that had been staunch and healthy the previous day, it was cause for tears. We, Emma and I, had sown the seeds, hauled old manure, nurtured and watered and tended, so where precisely did the blame lie when a plant folded upon itself? The death always felt personal and left me feeling guilty.
Moving on, I gathered eggs from beneath indignant hens, affronted biddies, loath to give up their intimate produce. When I left, they nattered among themselves, disgruntled.
In the kitchen, Emma nodded toward the table. “There’s cookies to go. Roland does like them oatmeal ones with the black walnuts.”
I set the egg basket on the counter. “I’d best get across the road,” I said. “It’s getting late.” But the straightforward peace of this place had a grip on me, and I had to force myself away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After helping Dora to use the commode, I found clean undergarments and a cotton dress, draping them over the foot of the bed while I straightened the sheets and plumped the pillows.
We brushed her hair, sponged her face and arms, and began the long, arduous descent of the stairs, resting at every third step. Too long out of commission, her limbs were weak and unreliable.
She wanted to sit in the sun, she said, so I carried a kitchen chair into the dusty, wind-seared yard, settling her near the garden to observe while I watered, telling her, “You’ll be doing this, so watch how many pails I carry.” Looking vexed, she twisted her hands in her lap.
“The day after a good rain, Dora, don’t water. If you do, the vegetables will get mold and the roots will rot.” I added, “Right now, everything’s scorched. I only hope the well doesn’t give out.”
“Could it do that?”
“It could, but I’m thinking that any week now we’re due for a drencher.” No point in worrying her unduly. She could handle only so many challenges at a time.
Dora’s gaze followed me as I plucked dried leaves from a second crop of peas and pulled up weeds from beneath tomato plants. After several minutes, she asked, “What do you think, Ruby? Is Roland still seeing that woman?”
“When would he find the time?”
“When he goes to town?”
We’d braided her hair into a long plait down her back. She reached for it now, as if to examine it. Turning it this way and that, her face thoughtful, she said, “In my mind, I call her Barbara. I can almost see her. I think she’s different from me. I think she’s dark and pretty, like you. And I think she gardens.”
“You think too much.” My voice was steady, but an artery in my neck was thumping as I passed her, returning to the trough beneath the windmill. When I’d emptied that pailful, I told her, “If you went to town with him, you’d put an end to any visits from a girlfriend—if there is one.”
“I couldn’t go to town.”
“Why not?”
“People know that I’m disowned. And by now, they surely know about the other,” she said, tilting her head toward the barn. “I couldn’t face ’em.” She shook her head and flung the plait over her shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I hoed between rows of vegetables, loosening the dirt, checking the depth of my watering, then went back to the trough.
“Are you going to remember what I’m doing here?” I asked, drawing her attention back to the garden. I dumped water around the base of the bean vines, then st
raightened, telling her, “When I’m done, we’ll walk up to the gate and back. You can use the cane Emma sent over.”
This tutorial journey of Dora’s and mine took us down a rough road. She was as stubborn and doubtful as an untrained mule. Though she was lazy witted, she was not entirely stupid, and she had a streak of canniness that responded to “What if something happened to Roland?” She did not want to end up living on the County Poor Farm.
That first week out of the casts, Dora merely sat and watched me work, though I insisted that she practice with the cane, moving from room to room, from indoors to outdoors, and, finally, from upstairs to downstairs and back. She used the commode at night, the outhouse during the day. The trip to the outhouse—down the back steps, around the side of the house, up one step into the building, then turning and lowering herself—all this was excellent exercise.
But she fretted over her limp. “It just wears me out, Ruby, and I ache all over.” I knew that was true. “And I look like an old hag.”
More than once, she burst into tears. “It’s not getting any better, Ruby! Will I always limp?”
Even I was moved. “It’ll get better if you keep exercising. And before long your leg will be so strong, you probably won’t have a limp at all.” Vanity was a better prod than a sharp stick.
Finally determined to recapture Roland, Dora now came to the table at meals, even breakfast, and expressed great care for her husband. Handing him a handkerchief when he sneezed, she said, “The haying dust must be awful. I’ll keep a supply of clean handkerchiefs ready.”
Two days earlier, we had done laundry, including handkerchiefs. Rather, I had done the laundry, and Dora had observed. As I was feeding the last load into the wringer, she rose from her chair, insisting, “I can do that,” and hitching herself across the porch with the cane.
Moving to the side, I passed her one item at a time and she fed each into the rollers as I cranked. We were nearly done when I folded a final shirt to make certain it fit the width of the wringer. If an article was too wide, it jammed the mechanism and would end up torn or stained with machine oil.
Handing her the shirt, I said, “This is the last. Keep it folded.”
One moment she was feeding the cloth in, and the next she was yowling. I grabbed the release knob on the wringer, and the rollers sprang apart. Tearful and frightened, she turned, holding out her hand.
“Can you make a fist?” I asked.
Trembling, she curled the fingers.
“It’ll bruise, but nothing’s broken.”
Opening the screen door at the Allens’ one morning, I smelled meat frying. Dora stood at the stove turning pieces of steak in a skillet. In a second pan, she’d scrambled eggs. On the table, a stack of toast—some charred but toasted nonetheless—sat on a chipped plate, a jar of Emma’s apple butter alongside.
Dora turned, smiling. “See what I’ve done, Ruby? Aren’t you proud of me?” She forked steak onto a platter. “I gathered eggs. The hens pecked me, but I gave them what for.” She giggled. Again she asked, “Aren’t you proud of me?”
Some part of me that was bold and sure and strong was fraying along the edges. What had I done?
We crammed the next three weeks with lessons. She still used the cane and she still limped, but she was moving with fewer mishaps and could even lower herself onto a milking stool. “That shows courage,” I told her. Well, it did.
The last and most reluctant of Dora’s assignments had been learning to milk. She was frightened of the cows and they knew it, rolling their eyes and shifting their hooves. Milking required several sessions, the two of us together.
For her solo performance, I left her alone. Afterward, she was querulous and shaken. “How do I get them to stand still?”
“If they kick, you’ll have to hobble them. But once they’re used to you and they know you’re competent, they’ll quiet down. Pat them and talk to them. They’ve got names. Right now, they know you’re nervous, and that makes them nervous.”
At the end of the day, when I climbed the stairs to the bedroom under the eaves, my shoulders sagged. In front of Emma or Dora, I held them straight. I was a strong girl. A plucky girl. Emma was proud of me. Dora admired my grit. But when I was alone, I knew that I was weak and confused. Confused about Dora and Roland and me.
One morning, while Dora gathered eggs, Roland told me, “I want to be a good farmer, Ruby. Like Henry. I want to study it.” Moses nodded, pouring syrup over his pancakes. “Henry told me there’re books in the St. Bridget library about what crops to plant for maximum yield and how to rotate them to get the best use of the land,” Roland went on. “I’ve got a library card. When threshing’s done, I’m gonna check out some of those books.”
Surely I was meant to be part of that, to read the books, work hard all day, and, when night came, go to bed with Roland. We were two lines of a rhymed couplet.
Sighing over all this, one night I lay down on my bed and reached for Whitman. But lying on top of that was a letter from Professor Cromwell.
“I loved your last letter,” he wrote. “When you describe the work on the farm and the things you love about the place, I can almost see them. I, too, am fond of cottonwoods, despite the ‘cotton’ that clogs the screen door. The lush, pendulous limbs and the shining leaves that turn up their undersides to announce coming rain, these are indeed worthy of our praise and affection. You say that cottonwoods want to please, that they will grow with their roots in the water at the lake’s edge, or with their roots in the hot, dry soil of the season you’re currently experiencing. Do not blush, little Ruby, when I say that their adaptability reminds me of you.
“On the topic of adaptability, you and Dora seem to be growing used to each other as the weeks pass. Maybe this is proof against the notion that the leopard can’t change his spots. Or maybe she’s simply seen the practicality of doing the right thing. I do believe that if one does the right thing long enough, the behavior becomes ingrained and irreversible.
“I wonder if bachelorhood has become ingrained in me and irreversible. Between my teaching and the laboratory work, I have few hours left for socializing, but I like to think I wouldn’t be averse if the opportunity arose.”
I rather doubted that he had no opportunities for socializing. He was, as I recalled, a handsome man and one with prospects.
“And speaking of socializing,” he continued, “I recently paid a call on your great-aunt, who is now confined to her bed and extremely frail. Still, she did appreciate the visit and asked if I would read to her from the Bible, since the book is too heavy for her to lift. She requested something from the New Testament, saying that the Old Testament was too dark for her present mood. I think she sees the end coming and finds the New Testament more reassuring.
“I am glad to hear that despite heavy work, you carve out time for books. Some people find Whitman shocking, but you have a sophisticated mind. His love of all things human, flesh and spirit, would appeal to you. It fits with your love of the earthiness of farming. Whitman finds the body and the soul to be one and the same. It is not Christian orthodoxy, but it is refreshing, and I’m not sure that I disagree.”
He closed with, “Don’t forget your Beardsley friends, among whom I count myself. We would welcome your return.”
In reading each of Professor Cromwell’s letters, I came away with a slightly altered view of myself. That is one of the gifts of a valued friendship. Extinguishing the lamp, I fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, as I prepared to cross Cemetery Road, Emma asked, “Did you hear the wild dog last night? Sounded like he was in Roland’s grove.”
She reached into the icebox for the cream pitcher. Turning, she said, “The thing’d break your heart if he wasn’t so dangerous.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday night after chores, Henry took the men, including Roland and Moses, to Reagan’s for beer. “Next week is threshing,” Henry told them. “Let’s have a good time Saturday night.”
When the kitchen table was cleared, the dishes washed, and the men gone, Dora begged, “Stay till Roland and Moses come back? I get scared when they’re gone.”
We sat on the back stoop in the fading light, surrounded by the restlessness of trees and the chirruping of crickets. Curious about something I had never known, I asked Dora about high school.
“I had a lot of friends,” she said, recalling days of lightness and ease, girlfriends and beaux. “I suppose it was because I was pretty. When I was a senior, I was Queen of the May, and I wore a long white dress and a crown of flowers.” The nostalgia in her voice was artless, easily evoking lost dolls and hoops and hair ribbons.
“Would you be shocked if I smoked a cigarette?” I asked.
She looked at me, seeing me in some new way, her face pale and lovely in the near dark. “No. I knew a girl in high school whose brother let her smoke part of his cigarette when he rolled one.” She went on, “I never could see the use of cigarettes, but I don’t mind if you want to smoke.”
We were quiet for long minutes, and when I had taken the first puff, she said, “I do kind of like the smell. How does it taste?”
“Like … adventure. Don’t ask me what I mean by that, because I don’t know.”
She nodded. “That’s how I felt about getting married. It was an adventure.” She shifted, tucking her skirt close around her. “I thought I’d be my own boss.”
“Is anyone ever their own boss?”
“Not on a farm, apparently; the weather’s the boss. Locusts are the boss. Death is the boss.”
From the barn, where Roland had locked him, Red whined with deep grievance and heartache.
“Should we let him out?” Dora asked.
“Roland’s afraid he’ll run off with the wild dog.”
“But he sounds sick with unhappiness. Maybe he wants to be wild.”
“He’s a domesticated animal. He might die living wild.”
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