Tallgrass

by Sandra Dallas

  A car pulled up, and Mrs. Reddick got out and waved to the men, who called, “How you?” She went inside with a covered dish, walking with her shoulders pulled forward. In the six months that Susan had been dead, Mrs. Reddick had shrunk to the size of Granny and looked almost as old, although she must have been the same age as Mom. I decided to follow her into the house as soon as I finished hanging up the clothes, because she liked to talk to me about Susan. Mrs. Reddick always said the same things, but I didn’t mind. I had come to understand how women needed to talk, even if you didn’t listen. I guess I needed to talk about Susan, too, and that was why I walked down to the Reddick farm from time to time. Once, Mrs. Reddick slipped and called me Susan, then burst into tears when she realized what she’d done. I told her it was okay, that it might be the nicest compliment I’d ever had.

  Dad asked the sheriff, “You know anything more about the Reddick girl?”

  I had hung the sheets on the line between the men and me, and I hoped that they’d forgotten I was there. I moved along the clothesline quietly, my mouth full of clothespins, tasting the wood.

  “I tell you, Loyal, I could put out a murder warrant for a certain person right now if I had any evidence, but I don’t.”

  “You pretty sure of him, then?”

  “Being sure don’t do a damn bit of good if I ain’t got the facts to give a jury.”

  “That’s about right. You want to share who it is?”

  There was a silence, and I bit down on a clothespin, the splintered wood rough on my tongue. I took a shirt from the laundry basket and slid the sleeve onto the line, securing it with the clothespin. It was the last one in my mouth, so I waited, afraid if I reached into the bag, I would rattle the pins and draw attention to myself. I knew even if the sheriff didn’t arrest the man, I’d feel better knowing who he was, because then I could keep clear of him.

  “I don’t believe I better do that. If I’m wrong, I could do a good bit of harm.”

  “I respect that.”

  I didn’t, and I almost sighed out loud with disappointment.

  “You probably have an idea of who I’m talking about anyway.”

  “I believe I do.”

  They talked so quietly then that I couldn’t hear them. Finally, the sheriff said, “You tell Mrs. Stroud the missus says she’ll keep your boy in her prayers. I can’t say mine would do him much good. Women know more about that than we do.”

  “That’s about right. She’ll thank her for it. I thank her, too.”

  “You take care of yourself, Stroud. I think he’ll come home.” I looked out from behind the sheet and saw the two of them shaking hands. Dad said something that I couldn’t hear, and the sheriff gripped his arm. Mrs. Snow drove up then and got out of the car with Betty Joyce. The two men exchanged glances, and Dad muttered something.

  “Miz Snow, you doing all right?” Mr. Watrous asked. He stared at her so long that she looked away. Both Betty Joyce and her mom looked thin and worn-out, and I knew they’d had to work hard, because Mr. Snow was still laid up. He used to go to Jay Dee’s and the pool hall at night or just wander around and not get home until morning. But now he spent his time in bed, so that neither Betty Joyce or her mother could get away. I’d missed Betty Joyce, but whenever I went to the hardware store, Mr. Snow told me to go on home, that Betty Joyce didn’t have time to waste on me.

  “I expect we’re fine,” Mrs. Snow said as I picked up the empty laundry basket and went over to her car. Mrs. Snow wrapped her hands in her apron, then realized she had it on and took it off and put it into the car. “I didn’t bring nothing for your mother, Rennie. We just come to pay our respects.”

  “That’s okay. We got enough food to feed a harvest crew.”

  Dad and Sheriff Watrous watched while the Snows passed Mrs. Reddick coming through the back door. I hadn’t seen so many people in one place since we left Union Station in Denver. “Come and see me, Rennie,” Mrs. Reddick said, and I promised I would. Then she turned to Mrs. Snow. “We miss you at Stitchers.”

  “There’s so much needs doing at the hardware that I ain’t got the time to sew.” Mrs. Snow held out her arms, palms up, as she shrugged, and I saw bruises, probably from where she had lifted heavy boxes at the store. Betty Joyce looked as if the work had taken its toll on her, too.

  When Mrs. Snow went into Mom’s bedroom, I whispered to Betty Joyce, “Come on upstairs. I got you something in Denver.” I led her to my room and took out a red-white-and-blue rhinestone V for Victory pin from a Neisner Brothers sack.

  “It’s swell,” Betty Joyce said, sitting on my bed.

  “Why don’t you pin it on your shirt?”

  “I guess I could.” But she didn’t.

  “Want me to do it for you?”

  “I guess.”

  “I won’t if you don’t like it.”

  “I do. I’m just tired. Mom and I have to do everything, and Dad’s never satisfied. He gets so mad at us. The only reason we left is that the doctor gave him something to make him sleep. Mom said she had to get out of there for an hour. If Dad wakes up, he’ll be boiling mad.”

  I sat down next to Betty Joyce. “Why doesn’t your father hire some boys from the camp to help at the store? My dad says they’re the best workers he’s ever had.”

  Betty Joyce shook her head and said in a low voice, “He says he’ll rot in hell first.” She looked at her hands, embarrassed that she had repeated such a thing.

  “Maybe we could go to the drugstore one night after the hardware closes, my treat,” I said.

  “I can’t.” Betty Joyce didn’t explain why, but I knew. Her father wouldn’t let her.

  In a minute, Mrs. Snow called up the stairs, telling Betty Joyce it was time to go. As they left, Mom said from the bedroom, “Tessie, won’t you take some of that food the Stitchers brought? We can’t eat it all, and it will spoil in this heat. I know you and Betty Joyce are just too busy to cook.”

  “I wouldn’t want to rob you, Mary.”

  “It would be a favor. I hate to see it go to waste. Rennie, you spoon up a little from each dish onto some plates, and nobody’ll be the wiser. Tessie, you saved me from feeding it to the chickens.”

  Dishing up the food, I glanced at Betty Joyce, whose eyes were wide as she stared at the plates, and I wondered what the Snows had been eating—of if they’d been eating at all. They couldn’t be taking in much money, and what did come in probably went to pay for Mr. Snow’s medicine. Even in the best of times, Mr. Snow wasn’t very successful in the hardware business, because people didn’t like dealing with him. He wasn’t honest. If you bought a dozen bolts from Mr. Snow, you had to take them out of the sack and count them right there in the store, because chances were he’d given you only eleven. He was selfish, too. When I spent the night with Betty Joyce, Mr. Snow ate dinner first. Mrs. Snow, Betty Joyce, and I finished what was left. Sometimes, Mrs. Snow cooked her husband a steak, while the rest of us ate only vegetables. As I covered the plates with waxed paper and set them in a box, Mom called from the bedroom, “Don’t give them Mrs. Smith’s cookies.”

  Mrs. Snow looked at Betty Joyce, and the two of them laughed. It was the first time either of them had smiled since they’d arrived.

  LATE IN THE AFTERNooN, when she knew she wouldn’t run into the Jolly Stitchers because they’d be home cooking supper, Helen Archuleta stopped by the house with baby Susan. She’d walked partway; then Beaner and Danny had given her a ride to our gate. “They were a-goin’ someplace. I don’t know where, but they stopped. I sure was tired of walking.”

  “Do you like them?” I asked as I held the screen door open. Beaner’s truck pealed off down the road, spinning a tornado of dust behind it.

  “They gave me a lift, but . . .” She shrugged. “I think I’ll walk back. Beaner asked me to go to Jay Dee’s for a beer, but I don’t want to. I said I had to take care of the baby.” She shifted Susan from one hip to the other and smiled at her instead of looking at me. I was glad the infant had H
elen’s light brown hair and pale blue eyes instead of Bobby Archuleta’s swarthy looks. It wouldn’t do the baby any favor to look like a beet worker. I said the baby looked like her sister, which pleased Helen.

  “Hi, cutie,” Daisy said, coming into the living room and reaching for little Susan.

  Helen didn’t know Daisy, and she clutched the baby to her, so I introduced them, explaining that Daisy had worked for us since beet season began. Then I told Daisy that Helen was a friend of Buddy and Marthalice. “My sister says you ought to move to Denver. You could find a job easy and somebody to take care of Susan,” I told Helen.

  She shrugged and said she already had a job and that Mr. Lee was good to her. “Sometimes Mom comes into the drugstore. She’s in awful bad shape. I don’t know what she’d do if I moved away. Dad . . . well, I don’t see him.”

  “What about your husband?” Daisy asked. She reached for Susan again, and Helen gave her up. Susan touched Daisy’s glasses, and Daisy jerked her head to one side and laughed. Then the baby grabbed a handful of Daisy’s hair and tugged. I smiled at Susan while I watched Helen out of the corner of my eye, waiting for her answer.

  “Oh, he’s in the service.” What else did I expect Helen to say, to admit to Daisy Tanaka and me that Bobby had dumped her? I wondered if she was better off without him. Marthalice had told me Bobby was a jerk and that she knew for a fact that he’d hit Helen. I couldn’t imagine a man hitting a woman.

  “Has he seen the baby?” Daisy asked.

  “Oh, no,” Helen replied quickly.

  “Well, he’s going to be proud. That’s as sure as Cheerioats mean cereal.” Daisy bounced Susan on her hip as she carried her into the bedroom, setting her down on the bed. Mom was stitching on a star patch for Buddy’s remembrance quilt, using scraps of fabric left from shirts she’d made Buddy when he was a boy. She set her sewing aside and reached for Susan, and Daisy and I went into the kitchen to let Helen and Mom visit. Daisy removed her apron, got out her purse, and gave me instructions for finishing dinner. I asked her why she wasn’t going home with the boys.

  “I don’t wait around for anybody.” She took off her glasses and breathed on them, then rubbed them on a dish towel to remove Susan’s tiny fingerprints. “I guess I ought to say nobody waits around for me.” With the boys working in the far fields near the camp, it was easier for them to go on back to Tallgrass when they were finished for the day than to come to the house to pick her up, she explained. When she’d first started working for us, Daisy had walked home alone, but lately, there had been incidents where boys in trucks had thrown rocks at Japanese who were by themselves on the road or had called them ugly names. Dad said it had to do with the war news coming from the South Pacific.

  “Don’t you worry about walking back by yourself?”

  “Nah. Who’s going to bother me?” She took a scarf out of her purse and tied it over her head to keep the dust off her hair when she walked across the fields. Remembering that I’d brought her something from Denver, I went to my room and came back with an Andrews Sisters record.

  “Wow! Suits me, sister!” Daisy said. “We’ll play it tomorrow, and I’ll teach you some keen jitterbug steps I learned. We’re up-to-date in that camp.” Daisy set the record on top of the Victrola.

  Then I gave her a second present. I’d seen it at the cosmetic counter at the Republic Drug when Cousin Hazel and I had stopped there to buy aspirin at the end of our shopping day. I’d already bought the record, but I explained to Cousin Hazel that I had to get this for Daisy—a gold compact with an enamel bouquet of daisies entwined with an American flag on the lid. Above the bouquet were the words Daisies Don’t Lie and beneath the flowers it said True American. The compact cost seventy-nine cents, and Cousin Hazel had agreed that it was perfect for Daisy. In fact, she’d insisted on paying for it. “Here.” I handed it to Daisy.

  She didn’t say “Wow!” or anything jive. Instead, Daisy looked at the top of the compact and read the words. She slid her fingernail under the tiny latch that opened the compact and looked at herself in the mirror in the lid, then lifted out the velour powder puff. A piece of cellophane covered the powder. Cousin Hazel had chosen a color she thought would be good for a Japanese girl.

  Daisy was quiet so long that I asked, “Do you like it?”

  “It’s just the nicest thing anybody’s ever given me,” Daisy said quietly.

  I looked away, because that embarrassed me more than if she’d thought it was dumb. “You don’t have to say that. It’s okay if you don’t like it.”

  Daisy took off her glasses and wiped away a tear that had started down her cheek. “I’m going to use it every morning before I come to work and every night before I go home.” She took off the little piece of cellophane and rubbed the puff across the powder, then looked at her face in the mirror again and patted it with the puff. “See. Pretty swell, huh?” Daisy clicked the compact shut and placed it inside her pocketbook. “Now how am I going to keep the boys away?”

  “Do you have boyfriends?” I asked.

  Daisy grinned. “Three of them. But don’t you tell Carl. He’d kill me if he knew.”

  “Are they all Japanese?”

  Daisy looked at me curiously. “Where do you think I’d meet a white boy ?”

  I squirmed. “Is Harry one?”

  “This Daisy doesn’t tell.” She made me think then of Marthalice, the way my sister teased me by not admitting which boy she liked best. Daisy reminded me of my sister in other ways. She’d taught me dance steps and corrected the spelling in my compositions. When I couldn’t understand diagramming, she’d showed me how it worked, and she’d sympathized when I complained about the math teacher at school. Daisy filled a little of the vacant place that Marthalice had left. I wondered if Daisy felt that way about me, if she thought of me as kind of a kid sister. I wanted to ask her if she did, but I didn’t know what I’d do if she said no, so I kept my mouth shut.

  After Daisy left, I went into the bedroom and sat with Mom and Helen. They didn’t talk much, just played with the baby, and a few minutes later, Helen looked at her Wristwatch and said it was time to go. As I walked to the door with her, she told me, “Beaner says the sheriff knows for sure that one of the Japanese men killed my sister, but he’s too chicken to arrest him.”

  “How would Beaner know?” It sounded like Beaner was just showing off, but still, I remembered what the sheriff had told Dad earlier.

  “Beats me. Mr. Lee doesn’t think it was a Jap, but he’s always sticking up for them. Beaner says we have to teach the Japs a lesson. Beaner says if the sheriff won’t do it, he will himself.”

  “How’llhedothat?”

  Helen shook her head. “I don’t think he has the guts.”

  “Except when it comes to beating up little kids.”

  “I heard about that. He scares me sometimes.” We went out onto the porch, but I saw Beaner’s truck coming down the road and pulled Helen back inside. She waited until Beaner had passed our farm; then she left and started down the road. I didn’t blame her for walking. I wouldn’t have gotten into a truck with Beaner Jack for a month’s supply of sugar rations.

  DAISY KEPT us GOING, chattering away, singing the latest songs, telling jokes from the “The Jack Benny Program” and “Fibber McGee and Molly.” We’d already heard them, but we couldn’t help but laugh when Daisy repeated them, stumbling over the punch lines, getting one joke mixed up with another. “It’s terrible times,” Mom told Dad one evening. “What would we do without our friends?”

  “You include Daisy among ’em?” Dad asked.

  Mom thought that over and shook her head no. “More like family.”

  Midway through the summer, we got another telegram. Mr. Blessinger didn’t deliver it. A boy came by on a bicycle and stopped at the house. I was sitting on the swing on the front porch, shelling peas, and I took it from him. Instead of going inside with it and giving it to Mom, I ran out into the far field where Dad was working and, without saying anyth
ing, held it out to him.

  He looked at it a long time before he brushed the dirt off his hands and then took it from me. He reached into his overalls for his pocketknife, opened the small blade with a fingernail that was black from where he’d caught it in the beet drill, and carefully slit open the envelope. Then he closed the knife against his palm and put it back into his pocket. He took out the telegram and smoothed it between his hands, glancing at me. I was so anxious that I wanted to grab it from him and read it myself, but I knew why Dad was taking his time. He was afraid of what was in the telegram. So was I.

  Almost reluctantly, Dad held it up and read it. He nodded and folded the telegram, returning it to the envelope and sticking it inside the pocket in the front of his overalls. “Well, Squirt, we were right. Our boy’s been captured after all. It says here he’s a prisoner of the Germans.” Dad reached down and gripped my shoulder to keep from crying. “We best go back to the house to tell your mother.” He didn’t move for a moment, just stood silently, looking off across the fields, and if he’d been somebody else, I’d have thought he was praying. But I’d never known Dad to pray. “He’s the first Ellis boy captured in Germany. I guess your Mothcr’d rather not have that distinction.”

  So there came another round of visits from the Jolly Stitchers, although their calls had only tapered off a little, never really stopped. This time, they came with boxes of cookies and hand-knit socks and funny cards to send to Buddy. They stitched on the rembrance quilt, too. “We’re not good for much of anything but standing around. The womenfolk are better at this than us,” Mr. Gardner told Dad. The two of them stood beside the water trough while Mrs. Gardner went inside with a fruitcake for Mom to send to Buddy. She said she’d made a fruitcake because she didn’t know how fast the German postal system was, and a fruitcake would keep a long time.

  “I don’t imagine any of it’s going to reach him,” Dad told Mr. Gardner.