by Jane Smiley
By the time she set the crate on the counter, Dan had the sweating block of butter out of the crock and was weighing it on his scales. Ten pounds. He said, “Well, I’m giving some of the other ladies only forty cents a pound, Mrs. Langdon, but I’ll offer you fifty, just because it’s in such demand. Of course, the time of year means it doesn’t quite have the flavor …”
“I think you’ll find mine does,” said Rosanna, with a discreet toss of her head. “Our cows have very good hay, especially this year.” Then she said, “Do you mind?” And she walked away from the counter, toward the back of the store, as if there were something she’d seen from a distance. But there was nothing—she knew what she needed. In addition to the momentary charade of pretending that she was merely considering his offer, there was the pleasure of gazing at his goods, being seen to gaze at his goods, and exercising nonchalance. That was the most important thing. At least outside the farm, she was not going to fall prey to Walter’s ever-present state of worry-shading-into-alarm. She was going to comport herself as the town women did, greeting everyone from a bit of a platform, whatever it was, even if it was only that she carefully candled her own eggs so that none of them were ever addled, even if it was only that her butter was rich and delicious, even if it was only that she and Jake made such a pretty picture trotting down the road.
Back at the counter, Dan Crest was waiting on an older woman Rosanna had never seen before, possibly the woman who owned the “coupay.” Rosanna stilled her movements and the rustle of her dress, and listened. Dan was saying, “Yes, ma’am. Wonderful fresh butter, right from the farm this morning. And the best around.” She couldn’t hear what the woman said, but then Dan said, “Seventy-five cents a pound, and I’m proud to say it.”
“Goodness me!” said the woman.
“There’s a French family in town—this is all they buy.”
“Indeed,” said the woman.
Only then did Dan’s eyebrow cock in her direction.
“Well, I …” But he made the sale, two pounds, and she also bought some sausages. When Rosanna returned to the counter, he said, “Sixty-two cents, in kind, and not a penny more.”
All Rosanna said was “I see you have some apples left.”
“Oh,” said Dan Crest, “those are some russets from over to the east. You know the Schmidts over there?”
Rosanna shook her head.
“He keeps them in a cellar dug in not far from the river. I would have thought the damp would rot them myself, but they’re as crisp as they can be.” And so it began. There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret—it was a source of pride.
FRANK HAD a special place, and what he did was, when Papa was outside and Joey was sleeping and Mama was in the kitchen, Frank climbed the stairs and went into Papa and Mama’s room, and he lifted the corner of the blue-and-green quilt, and he lay down on his back and slid under there. The floor was slick against his back, and he got himself all the way to the far corner, right by the wall, and he put his hands behind his head and stared up at the underside of Mama and Papa’s bed. The bed was much more interesting from the underside than from the top. It was like his own house under there, dark and shady, and he could look at things that fascinated him. For example, the legs of the bed had feet that looked like upside-down muffins, and above those, spirals—the back feet spiraled one way, and the front feet spiraled the other way, just like the spirals on the stair banister, one way, then the other way, up the stairs. The wood of the bed, which Frank also liked, was smooth and reddish, and on every side there were pegs sticking out. The best part of the bed from underneath were the ropes that ran back and forth, making squares. Frank liked to slide his finger along the ropes, outlining the squares, but he never put his finger between a rope and the heavy thing above it, because he had done that once and gotten his finger stuck, and it had hurt to pull it out.
There were no toys under the bed—that wasn’t why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn’t anything under the bed—no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no “no”s. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all. It was so quiet under the bed that sometimes he had a nap. Mama didn’t mind him going under the bed—more than once she had said, “Well, you can’t get into any trouble down there, at least.” Eloise would sometimes come to the side of the bed and throw the quilt up and shout, “Boo! I see you!” and that made them both laugh, especially since he knew she was coming because her feet showed below the edge of the quilt.
But Papa didn’t like him under the bed, and if Papa had told him not to go under the bed, then Papa would be very angry if he found Frank under the bed. And today was a Sunday, and they were going to go in the buggy to Granny’s for Sunday supper, and Frank was wearing good clothes—clean pants and clean shirt. He had been told to stay downstairs and not go under the bed, and as soon as he was alone, he did the very thing he was told not to do.
It was beyond Frank to understand why he sometimes did the very thing he was told not to do. It seemed like once they told him not to do it—once they said it and put it in his mind—then what else was there to do? It was like smacking Joey. “Don’t hit your brother. Don’t ever hit your brother, do you understand? If I catch you hitting your brother, then I will whip you, do you understand?”
But what was hitting? Sometimes, when Joey was walking along, all you had to do was touch him and he fell down and cried. Other times, a good wallop had no effect. If there was anything Frank liked, it was trying things out. Joey was the most interesting person to try things out on, especially considering that the cat always ran away, even when Mama was not saying that the cat was dirty and shooing him out of the house. It was obvious to Frank that if you had something in your hand, no matter what it was, you had to employ it. If it was a rock, then you had to scrape it on the ground or on a wall. If it was a fork, you had to poke it into your egg or into the table or into Joey. If it was a stick, you had to hit something with it. If it was a screwdriver, you had to turn a screw, and Papa had shown him how to do that. At Christmas, Mama had given him a box of eight colors (blue, green, brack, brow, vilet, ornge, red, yellooooooo) and a book to color in, but he had to try it on the table and the rug and the floor and the wall and his own skin. Only the wall was really bad—he got a whipping for the wall—but they laughed at the ornge on his legs.
Here came the call: “Frankie? Frankie, I don’t see you! Where are you?” He didn’t say a word. And then her shoes appeared, and then the quilt flew up, and then she was dragging him out by his arm and standing him up and slapping her hand down over his back, and she said, “I just ironed that shirt, and look at it—covered with dust! I don’t know what I am going to do with you, Frankie!” She slapped him down again, and held him by the ear as they walked down the stairs. At the bottom, Papa was looking up at them, and he said, “Where was he?”
“Oh, he was in our room.”
“Where?”
“Goodness, Walter, he was just—”
“Was he under the bed?”
“Well—”
“You can’t protect him, Rosanna. He knows not to go under the bed, and you told him ten minutes ago—”
“I’ll just put a sweater on over—”
Then Papa said, “Frank, son, come here. Stand right here.” Papa pointed to the floor just in front of his feet. Mama gave him a little push, and Frank went and stood there.
“Were you under the bed?”
Frank shook his head.
“I’m going to ask you again. Were you under the bed?”
Frank said, “No.” It seemed like the only thing to say.
“Frank, you have been disobedient and you have now told me a fib. What do I have to do now?”
Frank stared at him.
“Come on, tell me what I have to do.”
Frank shook his head again.
Papa said, “I have to whip you.”
Mama said, “We shou
ld leave; maybe after—”
“Can’t wait. You punish a horse or a dog five minutes after the fact, and they don’t know what you are punishing them for. Boy’s the same.”
Rosanna stepped back.
Walter took off his belt. Sometimes he used a spoon or a brush, because normally he was wearing overalls, but now he was dressed for going out, and he had a belt. He gripped the belt by the buckle, and Frank had to stand there facing the window while Papa took down Frank’s pants and opened his union suit. Then Papa gripped Frank’s shoulder and the blows began, right across his backside. Frank could count—he got to six before he was too confused by pain to count any further. But he didn’t fall down. Partly, Papa didn’t let him fall down; and partly, Frank didn’t want to fall down. Each time he stumbled forward, Papa stood him up and gave him another one. The tears poured down his cheeks, but he didn’t wipe them on his shirt or his arm. He had to lick them away, though, because they were dripping over his lips. Eventually, it was over, the pain and the fuss. He and Papa stood there quietly, and Papa did up his union suit and pulled up his pants. Then he turned him around so that he was standing right in front of Walter’s knees, and Walter was leaning forward, his eyes alight.
“Frankie,” he said, “why did I whip you?”
“I went under the bed.”
“Why else?”
“Fib.”
“Say, ‘I fibbed.’ ”
Frank hesitated, then said, “I fibbed,” although it had seemed as though the fib just came out of him.
Walter said, “These things don’t just happen, Frankie. They are punishments you incur with disobedience and deception. You are a smart boy and a brave boy, and your mother and I love you very much, but I’ve never seen anyone more determined to have things your own way.” Papa stood up and slid his belt back through the loops and buckled it. Mama appeared with Joey, who looked sleepy.
Frank felt like he was all on fire underneath his pants, but he stood up straight and let the tears dry on his cheeks until Mama took his hand and walked him into the kitchen. She set Joey in the high chair, then she dipped a cloth into the pail of clean water and wiped Frank’s face and dried it. She said, “I don’t understand you, Frankie. I just don’t. You look like an angel, so how does the devil get into you like that?”
Frank said nothing. A few minutes later, they all went out to the buggy and got in, Mama carrying a pie and a loaf of bread. She said, “Well, we should be there by supper, anyway.”
Papa shook the reins at Jake and Elsa and said, “Should be.”
“But they’ll ask why we’re late.”
Papa shrugged. Frank sat back against the cushion.
1924
THE NEW BABY WAS a girl, and she was no trouble at all. Just where her uncommon agreeability came from, her grandmothers could not agree—Walter’s mother, Elizabeth, said it must have come from Rosanna’s side of the family, and, not to be outdone, Rosanna’s mother, Mary, swore it came from Walter’s side. She was named after both her grandmothers—Mary Elizabeth. She had dark hair, but blue eyes. Walter’s mother said, “My grandmother had blue eyes. Blue eyes come and go in our family.” But the Augsbergers and the Vogels, when they all looked at you, it was like looking at the sky on a sunny day. Rosanna stayed in bed for two weeks after Mary Elizabeth was born, not because she was feeling terrible, as she had after Joey, but because it was winter and it was frozen and cold outside and there wasn’t much to do, anyway. Her mother stayed a week, and then Walter’s mother stayed a week, and all she had to do was nap and nurse and sample whatever the mothers had to offer, all varieties of oatmeal, of course, and that was delicious and so soothing, but also pancakes and dried apples boiled up in apple cider with cinnamon and sugar, or waffles (Elizabeth brought along her waffle iron). The happiest Rosanna was, was when she was sitting up on the edge of her bed, nursing the baby, and watching Frank out her window, bundled up to his eyeballs and playing in the snow fort her mother had helped him build in the side yard—the snow was deep and perfect this year, neither icy nor powdery. It was lovely to have the time just to look at the baby, at Mary Elizabeth, and watch her come alive instead of seeing her as a series of tasks and goals, the way she’d seen Frankie and Joey. Walter, too, was happy that it was a girl this time (“Maybe we’ll get a bit of a rest with this one” was what he said). And then Walter’s mother was opening the door and saying, “Rosanna, I made a little chicken broth, so warming. Would you like some?”
FRANKIE AND JOEY WERE sound asleep—Joey was even snoring a little, which Eloise didn’t think a two-year-old would ever do—but Eloise was awake, listening to Rosanna and Walter in the next room talk about a used Model T, which Rosanna wanted Walter to buy but Walter did not want to buy. They had been talking about it for a week. Walter’s position was that he had just spent so much money on seed that, no matter how little the fellow was willing to let it go for, it was too much; Rosanna’s position was that she had twenty-two dollars of her own money, and she knew that Walter had thirty, and the car was five years old.
“I grow fuel for the horses. How am I expected to grow fuel for the car? You want to drive it into town, you have to drive into town to get gasoline to drive it into town.”
Eloise, who liked to drive to the pictures in Usherton with Maggie and George and had now done so several times, didn’t see what need Rosanna had of a car. According to George, a Ford was nearly impossible to learn to operate if you were older than twenty, but Rosanna was sure that she could learn, and in no time, too.
“I could make better use of a tractor, if I had the money,” said Walter, and Eloise thought that he was absolutely right. The farm was three miles from town—you could walk there and back on a nice day. But she had to admire Rosanna, who never raised her voice or lost her temper or even wheedled. She just kept bringing it up, and if Walter got impatient, she would lower her eyes and pipe down. But, sure enough, she brought it up again. “Don’t bother saying no to Rosanna” was what their mother always said, “because it’s not going to get you anywhere.” Especially at midnight, thought Eloise, in the middle of planting season. She turned over and put a pillow over her head.
THINGS WERE EXPECTED from Frank now that he was almost five. Every night before bed, he was to lay his clothes for the next day out on the floor, just as if there had been a person in there (himself) and the person had flown away (or gone to bed). Then, in the morning, he had to put them on before he came downstairs to feed the chickens and the horses (Papa fed the hogs and the sheep himself). His coat was by the door, and he put on that himself, too, along with his cap and his mittens. His boots were on the porch. While Papa was putting his boots on, Frank put his boots on. Sometimes he put them on the wrong feet, but if he did, he had to walk out in them—there was no time to change, because the animals were hungry.
First they carried oats and hay to the horses—Frank poured the oats out of the bucket into their feed trough while Papa forked them some hay. Then they got another bucket of oats, and Frank walked around the chicken yard, throwing it to them, while Papa checked the nests for eggs. Sometimes, when there were a lot of eggs, Frank got to carry a few of them into the house, but he had to be careful so that the eggs didn’t break. Eggs were food and eggs were money—Frank understood those concepts perfectly well.
When they got back to the kitchen, Joey would be sitting in the high chair, eating whatever Mama had made for breakfast, and Mary Elizabeth would be in her basket on the table, looking up at the ceiling. Frank liked to go over to her and jump up and down. Sometimes that made her cry, but the point was not to make her cry, just to make her jerk her head or lift her hands or kick her feet. Mama always said, “Be nice to your sister, Frankie.”
“I’m nice,” said Frankie.
“Hmp,” said Papa.
Joey just looked at them, his head turning back and forth, Frank to Mama to Papa, back to Frank. Joe never went out to feed the horses or the chickens. That was Frank’s job.
Frank go
t to lead the horses to pasture, too. First Jake. Papa put the thing called the halter around Jake’s head, and put the rope in Frank’s hand, and Frank stepped forward very straight and didn’t look back, and when they got to the gate of the pasture, Papa had already opened it, and he led Jake through and turned him around. Then they stood there until Papa took off the halter, and they stepped back and Papa closed the gate. They followed the same procedure with Elsa. On good days, Papa let him ride Jake, but never Elsa. Elsa was a little “marish” and not completely trustworthy, Papa said. Frank led the horses back from the pasture in the afternoon. This was a job he was especially proud of.
What was fun and not a job at all was sitting on the seat of the Ford and putting both hands on the steering wheel and pretending to turn it—left, right. If he had been going anywhere, he would have had to stand on the seat, which wasn’t allowed, but it was more fun to sit and make noises. What made him laugh was to make a noise like they were going over a bump and then bounce up and down on the seat.
For Mama, he had jobs, too. He pulled up the covers on his and Joey’s bed, with the pillows under the orange quilt that Granny Elizabeth had made for them, and he picked up his dirty clothes and Joey’s dirty clothes and put them in a basket. Joey’s dirty clothes were dirtier than his. It was hard not to feel that Joey was a disappointment, since, as Papa said, he was a terrible whiner, and always had to be told to stop. Frank was well aware that he himself never whined. Joe also had nightmares and cried out in the night, so Frank had taken the job on himself, without being told by Mama, to shake Joey if he was having a bad dream and wake him up. Sometimes he shook him pretty hard, but no harder than Papa shook him.
Frank was also learning to read. He wasn’t old enough for school yet, but Mama had gotten the book from the teacher, and Frank could read almost the whole thing already. It was easy. And every time he read another page, Mama threw her arms around his neck and said, “Oh, darling Frankie, you are going to be president, aren’t you?”