“I’ve got to clean out the refrigerator again and sprinkle it with baking soda to get rid of the moldy smell. I hate that smell as much as I do the stink in the hired man’s cabin. That shack smells like rotted oilcloth no matter how many times I air it out. Oilcloth and molasses and old pancakes. I don’t suppose hired men care about things like smells, though.”
“Uh-huh,” Grover said at last, still not listening. The water ran over his hands, but Grover didn’t pay attention to how he was wasting it. He just stared out the window, stared at nothing.
“That’s why I’m going to run away. I’m driving to Kansas City this afternoon to be a burlesque queen, or else maybe I’ll join the Catholic church so I can be one of those sisters. That way, I’ll never have to worry again about what to wear.”
“You going to keep the car, or you want me to go along to Kansas City with you so’s I can drive it back?” Grover asked. He shut off the water and turned around and grinned at me. “I sure would hate to lose that radio.” He’d spent a whole day installing a radio in the Studebaker.
“I thought you weren’t listening.”
“I wasn’t until you got to the interesting part about the burlesque queen.” He pronounced it “bur-le-que.” “I expect I’d buy a ticket to see that. Maybe I’d get a private show ahead of time.” I pointed my toe and swung my leg up in front of me—not too high—while Grover reached for the towel and dried his hands. “You upset about something?”
“Just you. What’s on your mind?”
“What makes you think something’s on my mind?”
“Grover.” I sighed. “We’ve been married five years, and it might as well be a hundred, because I know you that well. Either you tell me what it is or say you’re not going to tell me, but don’t say nothing’s wrong, because I know different.”
Grover used his fingers to comb through his hair. It was as thin as Depression wheat, but Grover was touchy about his hair, and I never mentioned he was going bald. “How come you’re so smart?” he asked, and I told him not to change the subject.
“Got any cookies?” Grover asked. I knew then that he’d tell me. Otherwise, he’d have turned around and gone out to the barn to brood.
“I’ve got jumbles and hermits, made with the black walnuts we gathered down on the creek last fall.”
“Both kinds.”
I took out my plate with the peach-and-plum decal on it and piled it with cookies. Then I put the pitcher of buttermilk on the table with a glass. The outside of the pitcher was damp, and little drops of water ran down the sides, forming a wet ring on the tablecloth. I took off my apron and sat down at the kitchen table across from Grover.
“You sure make cookies better than anybody, Queenie,” he said, putting a whole hermit in his mouth, washing it down with buttermilk, then eating a jumble in two bites.
“Grover Bean, don’t try to wiggle out of it with the compliments.”
“You won’t like it.” Grover picked up a jumble, and I pulled the plate away. Grover knew he’d have to tell me what was wrong before he got any more cookies. “There’s squatters down on the creek.”
I set down the plate, and Grover put his hand over mine. I was sorry I’d made him tell me. There wasn’t anything that scared me as much as drifters. We didn’t get many this far off the main road. Still, every now and then, I saw a man tramping past the farm or driving an old car jammed with kids and belongings, driving slow, like he was looking for something to steal. Sometimes they even came to the door, asking for work. If Grover was there, he’d give them a handout, but I always locked the screen and called Old Bob up onto the porch.
I knew most of them meant no harm, but some were desperate and would kill you for a quarter. Down in Kiowa County, a drifter put a pitchfork through a farmer who’d caught him stealing off a clothesline. And I myself had had three dollars and a meat-loaf sandwich stolen off my kitchen table while I was in the chicken coop, and I knew it was a back-door knocker, because nobody in Harveyville except Grover would eat my meat loaf. I had good reason to be scared of drifters.
“They didn’t break into the hired man’s shack, did they?” I asked.
“No, they just pitched a tent by the creek. That’s all.”
“I hope you shooed them right off. You know how I hate tramps.”
“They’re not tramps, Queenie.”
The way he said it made me look up at him. “Well, gypsies, then. It’s almost the same thing.”
“No, they’re not gypsies, either. Not these folks. They’re just people, hill people, down-and-out. They’re pretty near as broke as anybody I ever saw.”
“You told them to move on, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said, rubbing the little port-wine spot on his chin.
“We can’t have people like that camping on our land.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like that’?” Grover asked. He moved his hand away from mine and picked up a hermit and bit it in half, spilling crumbs on the table. “They’re people like Ruby and Floyd. People like you and me.”
“Don’t say that.”
Grover ate the other half, then picked at the crumbs on the cloth, putting them into his mouth. “Whether you like it or not, they are. There but for the grace of God—”
“Don’t you preach to me, Grover. Are you going to tell them to move on?” I interrupted. Grover looked at me so long without replying that he made me nervous. So I got up and took out another glass from the cupboard, then poured myself some buttermilk, but I don’t know why, because I hate buttermilk. Grover took the glass out of my hand and set it on the table. “You hate buttermilk,” he said. “Look at me.”
Grover didn’t tell me what to do very often, so I looked at him.
“Queenie, these people aren’t moochers. They’re just about our age, with a boy no more than six or seven years old and a baby. They’re in need, and it’s our Christian duty to help them.”
“You sound like Lizzy Olive,” I told him. And when I said it, I thought, No, he doesn’t, but I do.
“That’s not you talking, Queenie. I met these people. There’s nothing wrong with them except they’re broke. I’m sorry for them, and I want to tell them they can camp out there on the creek until they’re ready to move on. Maybe we could offer them the hired man’s cabin.”
I just stared at Grover.
“We’ve got no use for it,” he said. “There’s no reason in the world some family in need can’t live in it for a bit.”
“Are you telling me or asking me? I guess it’s your farm, so you can do what you want to with it.”
Grover sighed, and I could tell he was disappointed. “I’m asking, Queenie. It’s our farm. You know that. I’m not saying you have to invite them over to supper or to let them join your stitch-and-itch club.” He’d started calling it that this summer because the chiggers were so bad. When I didn’t laugh, Grover added, “I’ll tell them to move along if you really want me to.”
I don’t like to go against Grover, but sometimes he can be a sap, believing every hard-luck story he hears. He could call those squatters anything he wanted, but they were tramps to me. “There was a man and wife in Missouri who got killed when a tramp set fire to their farmhouse. They’d chased him off, and he waited until dark, then burned them alive. When he got caught, he said he wasn’t sorry. I read it in the newspaper last week.”
“These folks won’t hurt anybody, Queenie. I promise.”
“You can’t promise any such thing, because you don’t know them,” I told him.
“Well, I know you, don’t I? You wouldn’t turn your back on a less fortunate, and that’s just what they are.”
“If you want to help the less fortunates, what about Tom and Rita? We ought to extend a hand to our own kind first.”
“Tom and Rita may not have money, but they aren’t poor. Besides, they don’t want to throw up a tent on the creek.”
There was no use fussing with Grover when he had his mind made up, so I said, “I
guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at them.”
Grover reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I misspoke about the shack. All I’m asking is that you let them camp here for a while. If you still think they’re tramps after you meet them, I’ll tell them straight off to hit the road,” he said. “Oh, and why don’t you put the rest of that buttermilk in a jar, since you’re not going to drink it. They could use it.”
He reached out for another jumble, but I swatted his hand. “They might like some cookies,” I said.
I packed up the cookies and the buttermilk and most of what else we had left in the refrigerator, telling Grover things were going bad so fast in this heat that giving them to the squatters would save me from having to throw them out later. I didn’t want Grover to think I’d gone soft.
“You’re not so tough, Queenie. That peppermint candy doesn’t go bad.”
“Now you watch out, Grover. Don’t you pick on me. They won’t be as likely to murder us if we fill up their stomachs. If they’re hard cases, I’ll tell them myself to move on.”
But I didn’t. Like Grover, I thought they were the saddest, sorriest people I’d ever seen, and my heart went out to them right off, especially the two kids.
When we drove up, the woman was kneeling down at that little trickle of water in the creek with a bar of harsh, home-made lye soap, washing out clothes. A pair of overalls and some shirts were already spread out on the rocks to dry. She was scrawny, but she was clean. They were all clean, and I knew they’d taken baths in the creek that day. The woman wore a dress that was more patches than dress, and the little boy had on a pair of homemade drawers made out of gunnysack. It made me itch to see that tough, old material next to his skin. I wondered why his mother hadn’t used a flour sack or a sugar sack to make underwear for him, then realized it must have been a long time since they’d bought a sack of anything.
Their old rattletrap Ford with a ripped canvas top was parked under a black-walnut tree, next to their tent. They’d laid stones in a ring for a fire and rigged up a tripod over the fire pit to hold a kettle. I knew there couldn’t be much in it. Jackrabbits were pretty poor pickings these days.
The man sat on the running board, with a stick in one hand and a pocketknife in the other. He stood when we drove up and threw the stick away, then carefully closed the knife and slid it into his overalls. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just the overalls.
The woman stopped washing and put on a felt hat, even though she was barefoot, and came to stand at attention beside her man. She jabbed him with her elbow and jerked her chin at his head, and he snatched off his hat, holding it in front of him with both hands. The little boy stopped playing and joined them, not looking at us because he was shy. I didn’t see any baby.
“Afternoon,” Grover said. They didn’t say a word at first, just stared and maybe wondered if we were going to tell them to pack up. “This is my wife, Mrs. Bean,” Grover said, and the woman nodded just the slightest bit. She glanced at the food basket I held, then looked away. Then she looked at it again.
After a minute, the man said, “Proud to meet ya.” But it sounded like he wasn’t sure.
Then the woman wriggled her toes and said softly, “How do.”
“Hi,” I said, and we stood there looking one another over. Then because silence is a burden to me, I said, “I’ve got buttermilk. It’s cold. There’s cookies, too. I hope they won’t spoil your supper.” Then I knew without anybody saying it that the cookies and buttermilk would be their supper. “In all this heat … things spoil so fast. … There’s just Grover and me. …”
The woman nodded again without smiling, and the man said, “We sure do thank ya.” They didn’t move, and neither did 1, so Grover took the basket out of my hand and handed it to the woman.
“You ought to drink the buttermilk soon, so it doesn’t go bad,” I said. The woman fetched two tin cups out of a wooden box on the ground while the man opened the basket and took out the jar.
“Would you have some?” she asked me, which made a lump come into my throat. As poor as they were, they had offered to share their charity basket with us.
“Why, thanks just the same. We already finished ours,” I said, reaching into the basket for the sack of cookies and holding it out. “Your little boy might like one of these hermits. The nuts came from the very trees we’re standing under. You go right ahead and help yourselves.”
The woman nodded her thanks and passed a cookie to the man, then to the little boy. “You say ‘ ‘Bliged,’ “ she told him, and he muttered something, his mouth full of cookie.
“Where do you folks come from?” I asked.
“Missouri,” he replied. “We been on the road two months. We took a wrong turn and ended up in Oklahoma. There sure ain’t nothing there. We’re headed for California is what we are, but we ain’t got the money for gas, so we figured we’d give Kansas a try. We’ll move on toward California when we get a little money in our pocket. We’re looking for work.”
“Any luck?” Grover asked.
“Plenty of luck. Luck, jes’ like a grasshopper in a chicken house’s got luck,” the woman said. “The car give out right here—two days ago. Blue says let ‘er sit. I says we ain’t got the choice. We cain’t move till he gets a part.”
The man nodded. “Blue’s my name. Joe Blue Massie, but folks call me Blue. That’s Zepha. This here’s Sonny.” Sonny scowled at the buttermilk in his mother’s cup but took a drink, anyway. He didn’t look up when his father introduced him. “Baby, she’s in the tent.”
“Blue says the part’s going to cost us. We’d like to move along. We don’t mean to camp out on private property. We got respect for what belongs to other folks. The fact is, we just cain’t move till we get that part. You tell them what part, Blue.”
“Water pump.”
“That’s a problem all right,” Grover said. “Do you have the money for it?”
I wanted to kick Grover for being such a dope. Of course they didn’t have the money.
Blue sized up Grover for a minute, maybe wondering if Grover was thinking of robbing him. “Bit. I’d be ‘bliged to find work. I work hard.”
“Most people’d like to find work, but there’s none around here that I know of,” Grover said. “You can see how the crops are burning up. That creek there, it ought to be up to the bank. If this was a good year, those rocks in the stream you’re drying your clothes on would be underwater, but it’s not a good year. We haven’t had a good year in a long time. I’m not hiring, myself, and I don’t know anybody who is. If they did, they’d give the work to local boys first.”
Blue nodded, expecting that answer.
“I sew right smart,” Zepha said, looking at me hopefully.
“I wish I had a need for it,” I told her. “There’s a widow lady here, a friend of mine, who does sewing: She needs all the work she can get.”
None of us could think of anything else to say, so we all watched the boy cleaning out the cup with his tongue. “He sure does take to that buttermilk,” Zepha said.
“You send him up to the house after milking tonight. We’ll give him some fresh milk. Your baby might like it,” I said.
Zepha was so grateful, she couldn’t even reply, just looked down at her toes. So I glanced over at Grover and nodded. He knew what I meant and said, “You folks are welcome to stay here for a few days, until you get that part for your car. The fact is, I know a little about engines and could take a look at it for you. Maybe I’ve got something on hand that will do. I can’t see any sense in paying good money for a part if you got it on hand.”
Blue and Zepha looked tickled, and Blue wiped his hand on his overalls and shook Grover’s hand. “By dogies, that’s real nice. We won’t be a bit of trouble, will we, Zeph? We’ll be careful with the fire, too. We won’t hurt your land none, Mr. Bean.”
Zepha added, “No need for you’ns to trouble yourself about the car. Blue’s real good at that.”
“We’ve got a bette
r place for you to stay,” I said, looking to Grover for approval. Now it was his turn to nod, and when he did, he smiled at me. “There’s a hired man’s cabin between here and the house. It’s not much, and it’ll have to be cleaned up, but it’ll keep you out of the rain.”
The two of them looked startled, then realized I’d made a joke, and they laughed, the man slapping his leg. “That’s a good ‘n.” Lack of rain was something we all shared, and we felt a little easier with one another.
Then the woman realized we’d offered them a place to live, and she asked, “You mean that? I never heard of nothing so nice. Last week, we got dogs sicced on us. Show them where you got bit, Blue.” But Blue only scowled.
“We could drive you folks over there right now,” Grover said. “You just load what you got in our car.”
“We wouldn’t want to trouble you none,” Zepha said.
“No trouble at all,” Grover told her. He helped Blue move things out of the tent while Zepha and I packed them in the cardboard boxes that were stacked on the ground. Then I heard a cry from the tent, and I handed my load to Zepha. “Let me see to her,” I said. Zepha nodded.
The baby didn’t put much effort into crying. She was a little bit of a thing, with the face of an old woman, but she was precious to me, and I felt a stab of pain as I picked her up, knowing that although I wanted a baby more than anything in the world, I’d never have one of my own. Grover and I had been married only a year when I miscarried, and the doctor took out most of my insides to save my life. I was lucky to have a man like Grover who didn’t blame me for being childless and never once brought up that I was the reason we had an empty place in our lives. Still, every time I picked up a baby, I felt as if I’d let Grover down.
I hummed a little song to the baby to get the lump out of my throat, and after she quieted down, I asked Blue her name.
“Baby.”
“I mean her Christian name.”
He looked at me kind of funny and said, “Baby.”
We couldn’t get everything into the car at once, so Grover and Blue said they’d take a load over by themselves and come back for us. Zepha went along to unpack. I volunteered to sit with Baby and Sonny.
The Persian Pickle Club Page 3