Francesca of Lost Nation

by Crosby, Lucinda Sue

  She tilted her head down at me and said soberly, “I believe you were in the wrong gear. Let’s try it again.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was to get back into the truck but she called me “Sweetchild.” And you know how that goes.

  After an hour or so, I was starting to get the hang of it. In fact, I was doing so well that Francesca thought it was time to venture away from the field onto the driveway. Still struggling with the pedals I could barely reach, I looked down just for a second. That’s when it happened.

  CRASH!!

  The jolt, however, was nothing compared to the explosion out of Mr. Mosley’s mouth. He’d pulled into the property at the worst possible moment.

  “Dammit! What in the most fired blazes of Hell do you two think you’re doing? Son of a bitch if I’m not one!” He yelled a ton of other things — including some of those interesting, unfamiliar phrases he’d used before.

  When I saw Mr. Mosley get out of his car, I slunk down onto the floor of the truck next to Babe.

  “Jesus have mercy on me! I have driven this car all over this country. Nothing ever happened to it before! How could you be so careless? So stupid!”

  Francesca wasn’t above railing at her own family on certain occasions, but she couldn’t stand for someone else to do it.

  “There’s absolutely no reason to behave like a screaming Mimi. It was an accident,” Francesca defended me. “And the damage …” She bent over and peered dramatically at the offending mark, “is miniscule.”

  “Why in the Hell were you letting that child drive in the first place? It’s asinine … completely asinine!”

  Grandmother swallowed some anger before responding calmly.

  “It is the custom hereabouts, to introduce young people to the mysteries of driving early. The practice has saved many lives in an emergency and will doubtless save many more!”

  This was an exaggeration and Matthew called her on it.

  “Bull!” he fumed.

  That’s when they had their first stare-down. Francesca always won these competitions, even when she broke away first. It was uncanny.

  She took on a statue-like stillness. He started strong, refusing to give in. Finally, with three deep breaths, she condescended to speak to him. “We apologize for the state of your car. But you have to admit, the dent is practically unnoticeable. It was an accident, purely and simply. Is there anything else?” Francesca asked. Her voice warned him there had better not be.That sent Matthew storming off.

  Babe and I hid in the wood box for an hour or so. That’s when I overheard Francesca on the telephone.

  “It’s just not going to work out, Daniel. I can appreciate…That’s not fair, Daniel. You know that I couldn’t … You don’t understand … But he … but I … oh, brother. Okay! I’ll give it one more week,” Francesca said, slamming down the receiver for emphasis.

  I opened the wood box door. “Are we getting rid of him?” I asked hopefully.

  Francesca didn’t even hear me, as she was talking heatedly to herself.

  “What a baboon! The man’s insane, gone completely round the bend and will never return. And his brother isn’t any gift, either.”

  She clattered the dishes as she put them away and slammed the cupboard doors as she continued ranting: “It was an accident!”

  Bang! More clatter.

  “The way he spoke to me!

  Another Bang!

  “The way he spoke to you!”

  Clash! Bang!

  “How did I ever let myself get into this?”

  Clatter! Bang! Now, she was working on the pots and pans.

  “Matthew and Daniel Mosley can both go straight to Hell!”

  Bang!

  I sat silently, waiting for Francesca to calm down, as I knew she eventually would. She wasn’t one to hold a grudge … unless Maude was involved.

  “Maybe we can have Lincoln fix the dent in Matthew’s car,” I suggested, when relative calm had been restored to Home Farm.

  “I suppose so, although it’s more than that cretin deserves,” she sniffed.

  Lincoln didn’t think the dent would be too much trouble.

  “Sure is a shame someone marked up this beautiful car,” Lincoln remarked with a grin. “Look here, hardly even scratched the paint. You must have been travelin’ kinda slow.”

  A plumber’s helper was all that was necessary to make the car like new again. Save for the few scratches we waxed out, you couldn’t even tell the Duisenberg had been hit by a delinquent child driver.

  *

  When the mail came, a little past noon, there was a letter from the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, one of the most famous hotels in the world.

  Dear Frances and Sarah,

  How we love you both and miss you dearly…

  The traffic never seems to stop here. You awaken to its rhythm in the early morning and it rocks you to sleep at night. Your mother and I became instantly accustomed to the sounds and hardly notice them after only 20 hours!

  The smells overtake you on every street corner, where small groceries, called “delicatessens” flourish, selling exotic delights from many cultures.

  The city is patrolled by men on horseback and your mother and I took a ride through Central Park in a hansom cab, pulled by a sweet-coupled bay …

  We set sail tomorrow.

  Love to you both, from our hearts to your hearts.

  After reading the letter two or three times, I folded it carefully and put it into my treasure chest. I still have all the letters I received from my parents that summer.

  I wasn’t so keen on our next chore. It was time to post notices around and about that we had found a small, reddish female dog. The good news was there would be no truck-driving lessons for me today. Instead, we saddled up RedBird and Miss Blossom and ambled down the highway, nailing the flyers on telephone poles and fence posts as we went.

  I fastened mine where I thought it would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to see. Francesca noticed but said nothing.

  When we returned to Main House, Matthew Mosley’s car was gone, an occasion for gentle rejoicing on my part.

  Since Lincoln was still at the house doing chores, we invited him to have lunch with us — left-over chicken and mashed potato sandwiches — open-faced ones. Although this was a common meal in Lost Nation, I haven’t seen it anywhere else. Their loss!

  As the afternoon heat swelled, it was time for a swim. Using the shortcut, Francesca beat Babe and me to the pond. As per usual, she dove in head first while I wriggled in one inch at a time. Babe delighted in the water, too, slapping at it with her paw, barking as she played.

  It was the perfect, glorious, lazy afternoon. Nearing sundown, we dozed underneath the oak, letting the warm air dry us. It was positively paradise … or so it seemed.

  At first, I thought I was imagining it, since Francesca didn’t stir. It felt like someone was watching us.

  What was that?

  I heard a twig snap. That’s when Babe took off barking, tearing in the direction of the escalating noise. It sounded like someone stomping quickly through the undergrowth. I started to go after Babe, but Grandmother grabbed my arm.

  We gathered our things and made our way back to Main House as quietly and quickly as possible. But just a short distance from the house, we heard another sound, this one sharper and much closer. We froze.

  Francesca took my hand and silently mouthed one word to me, pointing toward the house, “Run!”

  As I took off, someone jumped into the clearing, aiming a twenty gauge at me. I started screaming.

  “It’s okay, Sweetchild,” Francesca said, running up to me to hold me.

  It was Matthew.

  “Are you two alright?” he asked as he walked over to us.

  In a month of Sundays, I never thought I would have been relieved to be startled by Matthew Mosley holding a weapon.

  “Someone was here,” Francesca explained.

  Matthew nodded. “Yep. Last I
saw, Babe was chasing after a man, heading toward Lost Nation. I whistled her up, but I couldn’t get her attention. Ah, here she is.”

  Babe trotted over to me and sat down in a puffing heap. I knelt and hugged her hard around the neck.

  “Good girl! What a good girl!” I looked up at Matthew and took a deep breath. “Was it the man that burns houses?”

  “Could be.”

  “Do you think he’ll be back?” Grandmother asked.

  “Well, I made sure he saw me with my shotgun. That ought to discourage him. Just the same, we should telephone Daniel.”

  “Yes, of course. And thank you.”

  “Nothing at all, ma’am.”

  He suggested next time we went swimming, to take some extra precautions.

  Sheriff Dan stopped by that evening to look around the grounds but didn’t see any traces of an intruder.

  “Still, I second Matt’s advice. Take a little extra care, you two.”

  Then, Sheriff Dan rubbed his hands together.

  “Starr is off visiting her mother, and that means our stove is cold tonight. What’s for supper?”

  *

  My childhood was filled with adventure. I’d knocked down a hive once, by accident, and was chased by some angry bees. I’d broken my finger, swinging on the rope that hung over the fishing pond, and I’d gotten myself scraped and bruised, with the breath knocked out of me a number of times. I’d even fallen off a horse. But except for the occasional nightmare, that experience was the first time in my life I could ever remember feeling real terror.

  Chapter 8

  Starting Over … Again!

  M

  idweek was the best time to market, according to my grandmother. She and Rachael relished attending to this pleasant chore, because it “added some welcome distractions.” Though today I would have the honor of accompanying Francesca, I wasn’t the only one going.

  We stood on the stoop of the Bridal Cottage, taking in the empty booze and beer bottles.

  “Humf,” Francesca grunted.

  The windows were closed, but the panes fairly shivered with the raucous snoring coming from inside.

  I saw a tell-tale twinkle steal into Francesca’s pale blue eyes. Though her actions often surprised me, I had learned to accept her eccentric “inspirations” unquestioningly by the time I was three years old. So what the heck we were doing disturbing a cantankerous man while he slept off an entire bottle of hard liquor was a question I kept to myself.

  KNOCK! KNOCK!! POUND! POUND!!

  That should have awakened a hibernating bear, but it didn’t seem to affect Matthew Mosley. Francesca banged on the door harder, with enough vigor to startle a granite boulder.

  With a growling “What the Hell?” followed by a crashing sound and more curse words, Mr. Mosley seemed to have risen at last. He flung the door wide and stood at the entrance bleary-eyed and bedraggled in a rumpled robe.

  I had never seen a hangover in action before. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Sorry to disturb you. Sarah and I are going into town. Can we get you anything? Or would you care to ride along?” Her words were sweet, her intention not very.

  He stood silently and glared at Francesca.

  “Can we get you anything?” she repeated.

  “Give me a moment,” he said and slammed the door shut.

  “We’ll be waiting by the truck.” With a toss of her head, she turned and strode back up the drive. I swear I heard her whistling.

  While Mr. Mosley was still about as amicable as a rattlesnake, he had turned out to be someone we could count on. That won him some points.

  He’d also stopped objecting to my driving the truck around the place. Even so, Babe and I avoided him as much as possible. Francesca, on the other hand … looked at him with an alert attention I didn’t like.

  We entered Lost Nation grandly in the Duisenberg. You should have seen the heads turn! For some strange reason known only to our resident flyboy, he’d insisted we take his car. I felt like the Lord Mayor of London heading up a parade, and by the time our “chauffeur” dropped us at Porter’s Emporium on Main Street, we had left a sea of gape-jawed Iowans in our wake.

  Matthew went on to visit his brother while we entered the general store. Porter’s Emporium sold just about anything you could think of: canned goods and meat, clothing and paper products, treats and fresh-baked pastries (often whipped up by my mother). The heart of the place was a small wooden table surrounded by chairs, where the coffee pot was always full and the gossip flowed.

  The Porters had been in Lost Nation almost as long as the Pittschticks and much longer than the Schneiders, Grandpap’s people.

  Chet Porter came from British stock. His house boasted several fine pieces of rosewood furniture and Royal Doulton china his forebears had brought over generations back. He was tall, skinny, sandy-haired and soft-spoken. And what beautiful manners!

  His nose was exactly the same shape as Princess Elizabeth’s, and he insisted he was distantly related to the House of Windsor, which Francesca doubted.

  His wife, Emily, was just like a bird. She had fine features, glossy black hair and a pointed way of looking around that reminded me of Humphrey, the crow. She and Hunny Clack would have been co-winners of any enthusiasm contest anywhere, anytime.

  If you can imagine, Emily was the perfect cheerleader type and had actually been head Spirit Girl at Lost Nation High back in the early 1900s. She and Francesca had grown up together. They’d been best friends throughout school and shared a number of my grandmother’s wilder excursions, including one outing where they mooned the governor.

  They also bobbed one another’s hair and painted one another’s toenails, thereby driving both sets of parents to distraction. They loved the movies and agreed that Scarlett was a “silly twit,” as they put it, for not latching on to Rhett Butler with both hands.

  These days, the girlfriends weren’t so much in each others’ pockets, but there was a lively banter they shared that kept the connection between them strong.

  “Isn’t this a surprise? It is so nice to see you, Francesca. And Sarah!”

  “It’s Thursday, Emily. I come to town every Thursday. It’d be a lot more surprising if I didn’t.”

  “You’ll cut yourself one day on that sharp tongue of yours.”

  “No doubt, but you’ll be there to sew it back on again!” They laughed loudly and hugged.

  Francesca got out her list, and the two women began to gather up our order from the meticulously organized shelves, each product sorted alphabetically by brand name.

  “Sarah, dear, what do you hear from those world travelers?” Emily asked.

  “Daddyboys said New York is nothing but smells and sounds. He and Mommy took a hansom cab right through Central Park!”

  “Clay Morgan has a deep stretch to his soul. I always said so,” Emily replied.

  “You never said anything of the kind, Emily. I suppose you’re still out of bleach?” And on it went like that between the two of them.

  In one corner of the truly general store, Kett Purdy had set up a meat counter, a nicety that made shopping so convenient, it was a practice later adopted by the supermarkets.

  Kett was a medium man. He wasn’t thin or fat. He wasn’t short or tall. His disposition was even-keeled. He wasn’t the brightest man, but he wasn’t dumb, either.

  He was your average Joe in spades.

  Butchering was his specialty, everything from dressing venison to cleaning trout. Of course, he bought beef, lamb and chicken from the local farmers to sell to the city people. But he didn’t mind helping the farmers out, even when they were eating from their own stock.

  Kett was married to the reclusive Mary. It was common knowledge that his wife was a little like my Great Aunt Beedy, the one who sometimes insisted she was Greta Garbo. The butcher never hid the situation. It would have been futile in Lost Nation, where word of mouth spread rumors and facts faster and farther than a tornado could spread cow patties.


  Francesca always made it a point to ask Kett about his wife while she did her shopping.

  “I need a pound of bacon, some stew meat, a roast and a nice sausage. How’s Mary? Is she having a good spell?”

  Kett appreciated people asking about his wife.

  “Actually, she’s on a definite upswing these days. I may even persuade her to join me at the July Fourth picnic.”

  Independence Day celebrations were a delicious excuse for flag-waving, barbecuing, and parading. As in most rural areas and smaller towns, Lost Nation was a place where people invented their own entertainment, with many traditions dating back to before the turn of the century. Annual celebrations or monthly events like ice cream socials, oyster suppers, church teas, school events and town plays were big deals and filled everyone’s calendars. Lectures were also commonplace, with political debates being a perennially hot ticket.

  Francesca and Kett exchanged opinions on the weather, the Clinton County Fair car races and the G.I. Bill while she stacked the neatly wrapped meat packets in her shopping bags. She then exclaimed, “You tell Mary we’ll look forward to seeing her!” and you could tell she meant it.

  While Francesca continued visiting and filling out her grocery list, I slipped away and took Babe for a stroll. I was a little nervous that someone might recognize her and felt relieved when no one did.

  There was a relatively new store in town called The Sweet Shoppe. Banana splits and root beer floats were only five cents. I thought the soda jerk was dreamy. He was tall and blond. His name was Bill Tycorn, and his family owned the place.

  I peered into the window to see if Bill was working, but when he spotted me and waved, I turned around and ducked out of there with Babe at my heels.

  It was time to go snooping again. Mr. Mosley had mentioned he was going to visit his brother, so that’s where I headed.

  It was relatively cool inside the sheriff’s station — they had an overhead fan that kept the air stirring smartly. At first, it didn’t appear anyone was there. I was about to call out when I heard muffled voices coming from Sheriff Daniel’s private office at the back of the building.

  I had been warned many times not to listen in on private conversations, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Maybe the sheriff was questioning a notorious prisoner or he had caught the arsonist!