Winter Wheat

by Mildred Walker

  Mom had changed her dress and had supper set out on the table. She had a fat red candle from some other Christmas in the center. When I came in she looked in the pails to see how much milk I had.

  “Good,” she nodded. I think she would have said no more about Warren Harper or my marrying, but I didn’t wait to see.

  “I still love Gil, Mom,” I said. I might as well tell her.

  Mom made a snorting sound and tipped the pail of warm milk to fill the pitcher for our supper. I took off my sweat shirt and washed my hands at the sink.

  Mom muttered crossly, “Why you let him go, then, first time you get mad?”

  12

  THREE days after Christmas the wind changed again. It blew from the northwest and the temperature dropped so low the bare ground looked cold and naked. It was good to see the snow powdering the frozen earth. The cold made me think of the blizzard and losing Robert. My thoughts always seemed to move close to the weather. We couldn’t do much besides feed the stock. I sat by the stove and read. We listened to the radio a lot. Mom was so interested in war news she wouldn’t miss one broadcast.

  We had a letter from Dad:

  “Dear Anna and Ellen,

  “I found much that needed attention. Eunice was surprised to see me. She has been quite sick and still looks badly. Worry over money and fear of losing the house have made her worse. She seems lonely here in this big house, but she would rather be here than any place else. I am glad I came.

  “I am writing up here in my old room. Nothing has been changed. I find I remember the weeks after I came back from the war and you and I shared this room, Anna, better than the years when I was a boy. Remember how you never could think of the little pegs that held the windows and they would come down with a crash that made you swear in Russian!

  “I shall stay a few days after Christmas to see some old friends. You know I miss you both and Christmas at home. I hope the gifts I sent arrive in time.

  “Yours affect.

  “Ben.”

  I read the letter aloud to Mom. She sat still to listen. I wondered if Dad were trying to make Mom feel good. He must have remembered so much more than the way Mom let the windows bang! It was odd that he wrote it to both of us and signed it “Ben.” But it was true that this winter he had become Ben to me more than Dad, just as Mom had become Anna Petrovna.

  His gifts came. Bailey made a special trip to bring them to us. There was a big box of candy and a new leather pocketbook for Mom. He sent me two pairs of nylon stockings. The candy lay on the table in the kitchen where Mom could admire it. Mom loved gifts.

  “Ben send it way from there!” Mom said several times. “He spends money!” There was a note of grudging admiration in her voice.

  We were sitting by the stove in the front room one late afternoon, five days after Christmas. Mom was knitting. I was reading. Since I had told her about Gil, there had been a little coolness between us—not coolness so much as separation. Talk didn’t come so easy.

  We both heard the train go through Gotham. I thought how the train would stop only long enough for the mailbags to be thrown off and a few people would look out the windows with bored disinterest. I wished vaguely that I were on it, the way you think about being on a plane when it flies over your head out in the field, or the way you wish it were cool in July when you know it can’t be. It wasn’t more than a quarter of an hour later that we heard someone call. I went out to the porch and there was Dad walking across the yard, carrying his bag.

  “Ben Webb! You come!” I heard Mom say.

  “Of course I came.” He kissed Mom, then he put his arm around me. “Ellen, I wish I could have taken you with me.” I couldn’t remember ever having seen him kiss Mom before.

  “Why didn’t you tell us when you were coming, Dad? We’d have gone into town to meet you.”

  “Yes, Ben, you should tell us!”

  Dad laughed. “I got through before I thought I would, so I just took the first train and came. Where’s some coffee? I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

  Mom was busy in a minute making fresh coffee.

  “Did you have a good time, Dad?” I asked. I thought how well he looked in his “city clothes.” A pleasant air of strangeness seemed to attach to him.

  “Well,” Dad said slowly, “I don’t know, but it was a satisfaction.” He looked over at Mom. “Anna, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t have done anything else.” I knew he couldn’t have said that to her before he went away.

  Mom was poaching an egg. She kept her eyes on the edges of the white, lifting them gently with her knife.

  “I’d say it was worth it even if we didn’t have a good crop this year,” Dad added.

  “If we lose the combine you don’t feel so good,” Mom muttered, sliding out the egg.

  A hopeless feeling rose in me. I felt that Mom must have given me all the turkey money because Dad had given Aunt Eunice money.

  “I’ll always feel good about it,” he said quietly, and I knew he wouldn’t mention it ever again. He turned to me. “I hated to miss some of your vacation, Ellen. Your Aunt Eunice was pleased to know you were teaching. I told her how you enjoyed those old books. She’s sending you some of my father’s. She says she is going to leave the house to you some day, Ellen.” Dad didn’t look at Mom. He was busy buttering his toast.

  “Oh, Dad,” I said. I thought how Gil could come and see me there some day.

  “Yeléna’ll have this ranch some day,” Mom said.

  When Dad came to his cigarette, I brought him his presents. He put on his sweater and slippers. Mom seemed to forget all her resentment in her pleasure at seeing him.

  “That’s good sweater, Ben, better than your old one,” she said.

  “We loved our presents, Dad,” I said.

  “I wonder you had enough money to get home on, Ben,” Mom said, her eyes bright again with fun.

  “You should see Mom in her new coat, Dad!” I made Mom go and put it on and the hat and her new pocketbook.

  “Well!” Dad said. “Doesn’t she look fine, Ellen!” Mom blushed and her face seemed to open and be alive. I looked at her, too. She was . . . why, she was really handsome!

  “Stand up there beside her, Dad. You both look so dressed-up!” I said like a doting mother. Dad put his arm around her and they beamed.

  “You make yourself foolish, Ben!” Mom said, and moved away.

  “Well, I’ll go out and see how you two managed the place,” Dad said.

  “Not in good clothes,” Mom warned.

  A half-hour later we were all outdoors. Dad, in his old clothes, rode one of the horses up to see about grass on the other side of the coulee. Mom had tied her bandanna over her head and was out looking for the few turkeys she had kept over. I went out, too, in back of the house against the hill.

  “You go with your dad, Yeléna,” Mom called. “Go ahead!”

  I climbed up on the other work horse, just as I was, and rode after Dad. The wind blew my hair and ruffled the horse’s shaggy winter coat.

  Warren drove into the yard the last day of my vacation. I had dreaded his coming. Mom had kept wondering why he didn’t come.

  “I thought Mr. Harper was going to bring his little boy some day?” Mom said one night as we were doing the dishes.

  “He was probably busy,” I said. “I hope he doesn’t come.”

  “Why don’t you bring your little boy?” Mom asked him as soon as she saw him. Warren smiled.

  “Well, he had a cold. I’d like to do it a little later, if I may.” His face was reddened by the wind and he seemed to smile more. He fitted so easily into our kitchen, talking to Dad and Mom. I was glad he had come, after all.

  Warren stayed for dinner and he and Dad talked about the war. Their talk shut me out. It was a good thing I wasn’t a man, I thought. I didn’t see how wars would ever stop so long as they filled people like Mom and Dad with such fervor. Mom listened to every word. When they talked about Russia she interrupted with a boastful laug
h.

  “Germans don’t know Russian winter. They freeze like flies!” I felt that her voice sounded cruel and I hated it. “They can’t get Russia ever, I don’t think!” she added, and the cruelty in her voice had changed to something else, something that vibrated in my own ears and made me proud.

  But I didn’t mind leaving. I was used now to the coming home and going back to the teacherage. It made a pattern. If you can see the pattern in your days, it’s easier, I thought, looking down from a rise in the road on the pattern of fields spread out below Gotham: strips of stubble against plowed strips, faintly tinged with green and bordered by the faraway mountains striped with snow. The late afternoon sun glinted on the thin covering of snow and polished the shining stalks of stubble. It sparkled on the mountains so we could hardly look straight at them. A warm quietness seemed to hold the whole valley. I thought how Warren was becoming part of that pattern.

  We drove through Clark City without stopping and beyond it again to the open country that was clean and bare and wide.

  “Oh, I feel good!” I said out of my mind.

  “I feel that way when I’m with you,” Warren said. “You never seem restless or worried or striving for something.”

  “Not today anyway,” I said. “Tell me about your Christmas. Did you have fun with Leslie?”

  “I really did. He went every place with me, up to the sheep camp and into town and over to Lewistown. We stayed overnight in a hotel and Leslie loved that. I went over to see about selling the sheep. They’re too much for Dad with me going in the Army. The folks are going to move back into town.”

  “What have you heard from the Army?”

  “The Engineering Corps takes me as a lieutenant. I leave next Saturday.”

  “That’s so soon,” I said. I hadn’t thought of his going right away.

  “It wouldn’t have seemed so when I first came out here, but it does now.”

  “How does Leslie take it?”

  “I believe he likes the idea. He acts almost proud of me.” Warren smiled as he said it.

  “That’s fine. I knew he’d change toward you if you were here with him and . . .”

  “. . . and stopped drinking. Well, I have. But a lot of his attitude is your doing.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You should hear him quote you.” Warren laughed. “The other day when we were coming back from the sheep camp, the wind was blowing so hard it took our breath away. He turned his back to it and shouted to me, ‘Miss Webb says God speaks to you through the country. Maybe the wind is God’s voice.’”

  “Oh, that . . .” I said.

  “Well, anyway, we stopped on the way back and listened to the wind. The sea has nothing on it for roar. I got the notion while we were listening that the wind in this part of the country, so far inland from water, is kind of a big dry sea, itself. Maybe it has as powerful an effect on the people who live in it as the sea has on people. You know, Conrad stuff.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I hadn’t heard him talk in fancies before.

  “It has a lot of things the sea has, really, except that it’s dry and the sea’s wet.” He laughed again. “But I didn’t bring Leslie along today because I wanted to talk to you, Ellen. What you said the other day about not wanting to love anybody was crazy and childish. You don’t mean that.”

  I looked away from the road over to the east. I saw how the sun had gone from the whole side of the rimrock but for one little spot as big as your hand. It was strange how that spot lingered. If you were up there you could lay your hand against it and feel its warmth. Having someone love you was like that spot. You could lean against it and warm yourself, but when the sun left that place you would be cold again.

  “Ellen, I can wait for you to come to love me. I used to be impatient about everything. I’ve learned a little. You should have seen me last week with Leslie.”

  He stopped the car along the road and leaned forward a little holding the top of the wheel with both hands. He wasn’t looking at me, but down the road at the winter’s day that had about run out of light. It’s the worst time of day. I hated to have him looking at it without a spot of sun left along the rimrock or on the mountains. The mountains were the worst. They were blue-cold and fading. Maybe he didn’t notice them, he went right on talking.

  “First, I thought I was too much older. My life has been pretty much messed up, and you should have someone as young as you are. But then I tell myself that we were meant to find each other, because it was all such a chance that I was home when you came to the house in the blizzard.

  “I was anxious to meet you before that. Do you know what Leslie wrote me, Ellen?” Warren took a letter out of his pocket. He must have known it pretty well because the penciled writing was hard to read. “‘On the way home Miss Webb took my hand and we ran. She said she loved to run in the moonlight. I’m not afraid in the dark any more.’ Look how he spells moonlight—’munelite.’” He held it over for me to read.

  I tried to remember how I had felt last year with Gil when he told me he loved me, but it hadn’t been like this at all. I hadn’t had to think. I had known long before Gil told me. That time and Gil and I seemed like something bright and gay and sunny, like morning. This was like the late winter afternoon, somber, almost dark, with the light going out of the sky.

  “Warren, I’m afraid I still love Gil. I tried not to. I hated him some of the time last summer, but now I don’t.”

  “Well,” Warren said after a long while, “you ought to tell him then. You ought to let him know.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “He’s in the Army now, you said?”

  “Yes, he was down in Florida the last time I heard.”

  “If I should ever meet up with him, I’ll tell him.”

  “That wouldn’t do any good. He doesn’t love me.”

  “And you’re still going to go on loving him?”

  “I can’t seem to help it. It sounds dumb, doesn’t it?”

  “Damn dumb to me,” he said.

  Warren started the car and turned on the radio.

  “I wish you would let me take Leslie home the week end you leave,” I said when we reached the teacherage. “It might make it easier for him to have something special to do.”

  “Thanks. He’d love that.”

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I noticed there was something in the mailbox. My mail is mostly all educational pamphlets or advertisements, but I went out to get it before I had breakfast. It was a flat package in brown paper and tied with string. Then I saw the writing on it. It was from Gil. He had had my letter, because he had sent this to Prairie Butte. I cut the string and opened it.

  It was a water color on a sheet of drawing paper, fastened to a piece of cardboard. At first I took in only the colors: the greens and yellows Gil had wanted to paint that day when we stopped for lunch by the creek. There was a girl sitting by the bank under a tree, but her back was turned and her head was bent so you only saw her hair and the green shade on her skirt.

  I set it up on my dresser and went across the room to look at it. It was clearer from a distance, but there were no firm outlines, mostly color. I think it must have been good, because it made me feel like summer. I knew how hot it would be if I went beyond that shaded place. Gil had remembered it just as it was, only he couldn’t get the clearness of the stream—maybe no one could. If he had remembered the place and the way the bank turned and that I’d worn a white dress, he must have remembered everything else, what we said and the way we felt. I turned the painting over. He had scribbled a sentence in pencil:

  “The mud here is worse than in Montana. Gil.”

  That was all, but he had sent it in spite of my horrid, smug little letter. I sat reading it over and over the way Robert Donaldson used to read over the sentences in the reader. If Gil could joke about the mud, he wasn’t angry about getting stuck in it, any longer.

  It was like a Christmas present—maybe he had meant
it for that. Last year he had given me a picture of himself for Christmas. This year it was a painting of a creek and trees and a girl in a white dress, hardly even me, and yet this seemed to give me more of him than his photograph. I pinned the painting to the wall where I could see it from my desk.

  The Thorsons had come back with colds and Francis La Mere had cotton in his ear because of an earache. He kept saying he couldn’t hear and the others burst out laughing every time.

  “Miss Webb,” Leslie called out to me at recess. “My dad’s going to be a lieutenant in the Army!”

  “Yes, I know. That’s fine, Leslie,” I said thoughtlessly.

  “How did you know, Miss Webb?” Leslie asked.

  “Maybe Mr. Harper told her! They were sitting in the car by the road when we come by from town last night,” Mary Cassidy said archly.

  But school hardly touched me that day. I wanted it to be over so I could be alone. All through the day I watched the way the sun struck the painting differently at different times.

  After school Leslie came back in when he had his cap and scarf and jacket on. I noticed how much healthier he looked than in the fall.

  “Miss Webb, Dad told me about your asking me to go home with you this week end when he goes. Gee, thanks!” He leaned back against the desk as though he were going to stay.

  “We’ll have fun,” I said. “You better hurry so you can walk with Mary and Sigrid.”

  “I don’t care. They can go on.”

  “You better go today, Leslie. I have work to do.” I went with him to the door and waved. I had the feeling that he had wanted to stay and talk, but this afternoon I wanted them all to be gone. It seemed strange that I should ever have dreaded The Part after School when the children were gone. The late winter sun lighted up the yellow-green of Gil’s painting.

  That evening I wrote to Gil. I kept thinking about what Warren had said: “You ought to tell him, Ellen. You ought to let him know.”

  I held my pen still so long it wouldn’t write, and then it blotted when I shook it. I took a pencil instead and wrote him on a ruled school pad held against my knee. Afterward I could copy it.