Maude

by Donna Mabry

  I found my voice. “How are we going to pay for this, George?”

  “I bought it off of Doc Hennings. He gets a new one every few years. He gave me a good price on it, two hundred dollars.”

  “Where are we going to get two hundred dollars?”

  “I took it out of the bank.”

  I stared at him. He’d always been a little tight-fisted, complaining when I spent money on a piece of furniture or when he thought I’d bought a little pricey fabric, but I thought it was because he didn’t have money and had to be careful about what he spent. “How much do we have in the bank?”

  “Not as much as I did have.” He had that grin on his face like he’d told a funny joke and was waiting for me to laugh. “I’ll save up more. I like to have something to fall back on. You never know.”

  “I was wondering. This is a big house. How did your dad get enough money to pay for it?”

  “He didn’t. My mother had money her father left her from some sort of government settlement with the tribe. When they would fight, she’d remind him he lived in her home, not the other way around.”

  I wanted to press him for an amount, but decided not to for the time being. It comforted me to know he had something saved. I was well aware of the value of money. “Dinner will be ready in about a half-hour. You’re early.”

  George nodded and waved his hand at the car. “That’s all right. I got things to do here.”

  I went back to the kitchen and my cooking. As I stirred the stew, I realized that after living with him all these years and bearing him four children, there were still too many things I didn’t know about this man.

  I resented that George wouldn’t tell me how much money he had. That made it his, not ours. I decided I would somehow get more of my own. The question was how to do it. My eyes weren’t as good as they once were, and I’d just about given up sewing for friends, only doing the work for a few of them and for my family.

  I usually charged things at the stores, and George would pay the bill at the end of the month, so I didn’t handle cash. It was ridiculous. I was a grown woman, and except for the small amount still in the bureau drawer that I brought with me from Tennessee, I didn’t have money to call my own.

  I talked it over with Clara, who had a ready solution. “Sister Thompson down the road quit keeping chickens when her husband passed. She’s probably been buying eggs from the store. I bet if you asked her, she’d buy them from you. You’ve got more than you need for your family. If you explained things to her, she’d keep quiet so George wouldn’t need to know about it.”

  “I don’t care if he knows about it or not. He didn’t care about my making money from sewing. I think he liked it when I could bring in my own cash.”

  The next day, I talked to the Thompson widow and made the deal. Then she thought of someone else who would do the same thing. It didn’t amount to much, two dozen eggs a week, but those few cents were my money, and it had nothing to do with George. What I made from sewing before mostly went into decorating the house and pretty fabric for clothes for Betty Sue and me. The egg money was different. Every week, I slipped the coins into a pasteboard box and put it under my step-ins in the bottom drawer of the bureau. Every time I added a few cents I felt a warm satisfaction. It wasn’t the amount I had so much as it was the fact that I had it, and George didn’t know about it.

  Chapter 30

  There were three dogs on the place when I came, all male. Over the years, when one died, George would grieve for a while but be comforted by the presence of the other two. The lost pet would sooner or later be somehow replaced by a puppy that someone gave George. I liked the dogs, and once in a while, gave one a pat on the head, but they were George’s dogs, the same way that Bud was his boy.

  After Pawnee died, George didn’t bring home any more puppies. I think he’d been hurt too much by losing Pawnee and didn’t want to feel that way ever again.

  The cats were a necessity and kept the varmints from over-running the barn and house. They were mostly wild. I’d become attached to only one or two over the years. They didn’t have to be fed, providing for themselves with mice and snakes. The cats were really George’s property, too.

  I had the children, but I was lonely. Clara spent more of her time at the store. Except for Mondays, when she stayed home and both of us did our wash and had the afternoon to work together and talk. I was alone all day with the two small children. I had plenty of work to fill my time, but I longed for the companionship of another adult, and George didn’t help any. We were like two strangers sharing a house in the daytime. Once in a while, there were a few minutes relations at night that still didn’t mean anything to me.

  My talks with George were always about practical matters. I didn’t talk to him about the things I could talk about with Clara, things like what I read in the paper, my dreams for our lives, and about ‘woman’ things.

  In 1928, I voted for Herbert Hoover. I read about his work as an engineer and how good he’d been working for the government after the war. Partly, I voted for him because I admired his wife’s dignity. He turned out to be a sad disappointment to me.

  In 1929, I planted my gardens in late April like I always did. I’d kept my flower beds in the original spot I planted the first year I came to Missouri. After George’s mother died, I kept the vegetables in the plot of ground that the old woman used. It didn’t rain that spring and summer, at least, not enough to water the gardens. For weeks, I carried water from the well to the vegetables, trying to keep the young plants alive.

  Some of the neighbors had their wells run dry and had to carry buckets of water from nearby springs to use in their homes. I thanked God we were better off than that. I let the flower beds go dry, even though it grieved me, but kept on drawing enough water for the vegetables.

  We had to eat, and as the summer went on, and the rains still didn’t come, prices for food in town went higher and higher. We ate mostly chicken. It was the wrong time of the year for fresh pork. The only thing still left out in the smokehouse were several hams and the slabs of bacon that George loved so much. I wondered if they would last until October, when the hogs would be butchered.

  George didn’t raise his own hogs, but would buy the meat from the freshly killed and cleaned animals, bring it home, and smoke it himself. He’d never impressed me with any ambitious work, but he seemed to enjoy curing the meat and did a good job of it. He would come home with several dead hogs that had been split down the middle and hang them up on a rack in the back yard, where he cut them into the portions that suited him.

  When he butchered the meat, he kept several tubs placed in a circle around him, tossing one kind of bits in one tub, another kind of parts into the next. When he was finished, he would take the large cuts of meat, wrap them in muslin, and carry them into the smokehouse, where he hung them on hooks from the ceiling. He lit the fire in the center of the room and let the smoke do its job.

  Outside, the bones were scraped and the rest of the meat ground up in a machine George fastened to the porch rail and cranked by hand. Then, that meat was seasoned with sage and stuffed into the cleaned intestine casings for sausage. He was very particular that it be done just the way he liked, and it was cheaper than buying the meat already smoked.

  I’d almost come to appreciate his being frugal. It wasn’t over much, and I liked the aroma of hickory that filled the air when the meat was being cured. The bones were boiled, and I used them and the fat to make soap.

  The lack of rain went on into the fall. I’d always changed my tub of wash water for the laundry with each load, but I began using the same water over again, washing the whites and light colors first, then the darks. It didn’t sit well with my ideas of cleanliness, but I felt it necessary to save as much water as I could.

  Each time I drew from the well, I listened for the sound of the bucket hitting the surface of the water as I released the rope. I could tell that it was taking longer than before. I told George about it. He’d always bee
n proud of the sweet, clear water from his well. Now, we both were afraid of what would happen if it went dry. George began taking the little wagon full of buckets and the washtubs down to the spring at the back of his property and drawing water for the animals, the garden, and the wash.

  Every Sunday, the preacher would lead the congregation in a prayer for rain that didn’t come. I began adding the request to my own daily prayers. It had been a lifelong habit of mine to pray each morning before I began my day, and each evening before I went to bed. Of course, there were what I thought of as emergency prayers in between. I’d been taught that I shouldn’t pray for things for myself, so I asked for rain for the town and never mentioned to God the plot of land behind my house, but I still thought about it as I gave thanks for my blessings and recited my requests. I felt guilty that I couldn’t keep it out of my mind. When the rain failed to come week after week, I felt that it was somehow my fault.

  The harvest from the garden that fall wasn’t nearly as much as usual. George said we couldn’t expect a better crop to grow from water that had been brought to it instead of real rain. I canned the tomatoes, carrots, beans, okra and corn, but there wasn’t enough harvest to fill the shelves of the pantry the way it had in other years.

  The peaches, pears and plums from the grove of fruit trees were small, dry-looking little things, but I did the best I could with them. I knew come January, they would still be a treat for my family. I made jams from the little blueberries and strawberries that had survived. As soon as the berries started showing color I’d covered the berry plants and bushes with netting to keep the birds away. It seemed to me that the birds were hungrier this year, their normal abundance of wild fruit having dried up by mid-summer. Once, I watched a bird pluck at the netting over the strawberries until he had it torn away. He pulled at one of the fruits until the plant came right out of the ground. He flew away with the berry in his beak and the whole plant still attached to it.

  Rain was still scarce in 1930. When I said my prayers, I gave thanks that the well was still sufficient for our needs. The garden survived with the same efforts as the year before, but there was a smaller crop than the bad year before.

  There was even less rain in 1931 and 1932. I read in the paper that wells were drying up all over the state, and I was thankful that ours was still holding out. I made even more changes to our routine to save water. My family wore their clothes longer, took fewer baths, and used the bath and laundry water to water the garden

  The farmers that came to town for supplies were desperate. Their crops had been thirsty for four years in a row. Most of them had borrowed money from the bank to get by, and now the bank was foreclosing on their property. I didn’t see the sense in it. If they took the farms away from the people who worked them, and no one else had the money to buy the land from the bank, what good did it do the bank?

  There wasn’t rain, so there was dust. Great clouds of it would get kicked up by the least little wind, and there were times you couldn’t see across the road. I kept the windows shut tight most of the time but it was impossible to keep it out of the house.

  Our home was on the outskirts of Kennett, and from time to time, families I knew from church would stop to say goodbye on their way out of town. Some were moving west, as far as California, where the land was still growing good crops. Some headed north to Chicago or Detroit or other cities in hopes of getting manufacturing jobs in the factories.

  In 1934 we got a letter from Bessie and John.

  Dear George and Maude,

  Things are really bad here. Almost everyone in town has left to look for work somewhere else. I don’t know if Helen wrote you about it, but the general store had to close down because hardly anyone could pay their bill and Tommy and Helen couldn’t buy more merchandise to sell. They kept the doors open until everything was gone and then just locked up and went home. Helen says they have enough money saved to tide them over, but we never saved much ourselves.

  I just wanted to let you know that we’re moving to Detroit. John has a brother there who can get him a job at the Buick factory, and we can stay with them until we get a place of our own. I don’t know yet what our address will be, but I will send it to you as soon as possible.

  Take care of yourselves and write me. We love you. Kiss those babies for me. I wish I’d had a chance to know them. We always intended to come visit. If things there don’t get better, you know you will always be welcome anywhere we have a roof over our heads.

  Love,

  Bessie and John and Maxine

  I was grief-stricken over the thought of Bessie and her family moving to Detroit. Even though I hadn’t seen them for years, it comforted me to know we had family only a few days away and doing well enough. Now Bessie would be a distance from us I couldn’t even imagine.

  I worried about Helen and Tommy and Faith. What would they do if things didn’t pick up before their money ran out? I was angry that Helen hadn’t even written me about their problems, but I realized that neither one of us was much of a letter-writer, and Helen certainly wasn’t one to share bad news.

  I wondered how Clara was doing. Clara wasn’t one to share bad news either. I knew that things at the store had grown worse, but Clara managed to keep the doors open with just one helper to do the heavy lifting. How much longer could the business survive?

  I didn’t buy the newspaper any more, but when I went into town I’d stand in front of the counter and look over the main articles. They were calling this The Great Depression and saying things were just as bad in the cities as they were in the farm areas. I thought about Bessie and John. I hoped they weren’t going from the frying pan into the fire by moving to Detroit. It was only a few days later that George came home upset about something. I waited for him to tell me, but when he hadn’t said a word by suppertime, I finally asked him, “What is it, George? You’ve been unhappy ever since you got home.”

  George shook his head. “The mayor told me that I’d have to let Doug Graham go. There isn’t any real crime in town anyway, and the council can’t see its way clear to keep on paying two salaries. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. They’ve got three youngsters to feed. Where’s he going to get work?”

  “That’s terrible, George. Poor Sarah, I just don’t know where it’s going to end. The drought has to be over soon. If they can just hang on, maybe next year things will be better. I’ll pray for them.”

  George looked at me. “You do that. If things don’t get better, you might want to say a prayer for us too.”

  “Do we have enough money in the bank to last us for a while if they let you go, too?”

  George shook his head. “Depends on how long this mess lasts, Maude.”

  When time came around for the next election, in 1936, for the first time in years, George didn’t run unopposed. Doug Graham registered to run against him. Doug visited the jail and apologized to George but explained that he had to think about his family first, and he couldn’t make it anymore. He’d taken out a mortgage on his home when he was laid off, and now that money was almost gone, and he had payments to make. He could only get day-labor jobs, and those were scarce. He had to do something, and being a deputy was the only other work he’d ever done.

  George didn’t think he had to worry about losing. Everyone liked him. He thought he would win this time, just as he’d always done.

  When the results came in, George lost the election. He explained it to me. “Things have been so bad that people just want a change, want to see if there’s something else that can be done. The mayor lost, and every one of the council members too.”

  I was suddenly scared in a way I’d never been before. “How much money do we have in the bank, George?”

  “A little,” he said.

  I wasn’t satisfied with that for an answer. “Do we have enough money in the bank to get by for very long, George?”

  “For a while.”

  It made me want to wring his neck, but I let it go. It was his job to pr
ovide for us, and he always had.

  He must have had quite a bit saved up. Even with him out of work except for a day at labor now and then, the money lasted for another year. There was still no rain and no steady work to be had. It was true that everyone liked George, but the men who might have hired him were well aware of his fondness for resting up. They smiled at him and clapped him on the back. For the most part, they told him, “Nothing today, George.”

  George took out a loan on the house. He couldn’t get as much money as he’d hoped, but things were bad for the bank, too. He planned that the money would make the payments on the loan, pay our expenses, and last us until things picked up.

  I scrimped on things as best I could. None of us had new clothes for a long time. Gene wore Bud’s hand-me-downs, Paul wore Gene’s, and I made over some of Lulu’s and my own things and used flour sacks to make clothes for Betty Sue.

  Shoes were different. The children could go barefoot in the summer, but they had to have shoes for the winter. A box was set by the wall in the front of the church, and people put their children’s outgrown shoes in it. If a family was lucky, they might find a pair in the box that would fit one of their children. Most of them had holes in the bottom, but I became an expert at stitching on scraps of leather to cover the soles. I used an upholstery needle and a pair of pliers to poke the heavy needle in and out of the leather.

  To save on oil, the lamps weren’t lit unless we had to have the light. I’d always been proud of the quality of my meals and the abundance on the table, but now the children didn’t dare put more on their plate than they could eat. I gave thanks to God my children had never been hungry. I knew well that others in the town had not been so blessed.

  One morning that fall, Clara and I were hanging our laundry on the line the way we always did. Clara was unusually quiet, and I let it go without saying anything until we were finished with the work. Then I poured some cold tea and we sat on the porch and rocked. When Clara didn’t explain her mood, I asked, “Well?”