by Kate Seredy
“Arithmetic,” giggled Janet. “Why Arithmetic?”
Andy grinned. “Ain’t as smart as I thought you were. Put down three and carry one, that’s why. Anyway, there we were, on Fox Hill and ‘Rithmetic was a’barkin’ like mad at the big maple. She was a’barkin’, but not actin’ just right, scared like she was, tail between her legs and shiverin’. I couldn’t see what she was so almighty scared of; so I walk up, easy like, peerin’ up, I am right under the tree. All of a sudden Gramp lets out a holler, ‘Get away from there, boy,’ he yells an’ lets go with a load. Somethin’ screeches like old Ned and comes tumblin’ down onto my shoulder. ‘Twas an old bobtail, head on him as big as mine or bigger, a’clawin’ at the snow and screechin’ something wicked. But Gramp gave him another skinful and that was that. Put my shoulder right out of joint; Gramp had to yank it back after we got home. ‘Rithmetic, she never was any good afterwards, scared even of a bit of a squirrel.”
Again he must have read their thoughts or maybe noticed the fearful glance Janet sent into the dark branches overhead, for he said:
“They ain’t here until ‘bout January. Or when we get a right heavy snowfall. Come from the wild mountains above. Just hungry, else they wouldn’t come at all. Maybe, come snow, we can bag one, Dick. I’d like to, right well.”
“I don’t know how to shoot,” Dick said with regret in his voice.
“Didn’t know how to ride or mow or milk, either. Shootin’ ain’t hard to learn. Show you, if you like.”
“Swell. Maybe Dad will buy me a gun. I’ll ask him.”
He did, a few days later. Father didn’t look very happy about it, but Gran said:
“It would be a good idea to have one gun in the house; I never knew of a farmhouse without one. I’m a tolerable shot myself; many a weasel and chicken hawk I laid out in my day.”
“That’s all right, Mom, but a twelve-year-old child . . .”
“Fiddlesticks! Children get hurt when they are kept in ignorance of danger. Teach them to swim, shoot, ride, to have the proper respect for what might happen if they are careless and there won’t be as many accidents. Andy has a wholesome respect for a gun; I’d let him do the teaching.”
So, by the beginning of September, Dick had become a fairly accurate shot. The boys had rigged up a safe target against the side of an abandoned quarry and practiced in their spare time. There wasn’t as much time for play and work on the farm as there had been through the summer, not for the children. They were all going to school. The little, one room district school, where Andy had gone before, was now closed and the school bus came every morning to take them to Bloomingburg. It was four o’clock by the time it brought them back again. But, there were still the long, late summer evenings and weekends for horseback riding, for target practice, or, on rainy days, just watching Andy draw pictures.
He had made, and sold, his drawing of the mother duck attacking the turtle and he was working on one that was the picture of the bittern adored by a circle of ducks. There were others he had sold; the money always going straight to the bank.
One day, he had just given Father another check to deposit, Father said: “He will soon have more money in the bank than we have. Our diminishing funds remind me, we do need a truck. But, with the new restrictions on pleasure cars and the cut in car production, how would it strike you if we traded in the sedan for a truck?”
Gran looked up from her knitting, her eyes twinkling. “It wouldn’t strike me at all. It would . . . tickle me, pink.”
Father laughed. “Well, consider yourself tickled, Mom. The dealer is to deliver a good, if used pick-up truck tomorrow. Even swap for the sedan. We can keep the radio, and they give us a few extra noises free. It squeaks and it rattles, but the motor and tires are excellent. No heater though. Do you mind?” He was looking at Mother. She smiled.
“No. That bridge is still burning, that’ll keep me warm enough.” Then her eyes grew round and she exclaimed: “And we never even voted! We . . . just forgot to go back.”
Gran laid aside her knitting. “Oh, haven’t you? Look at your hands, Molly. You, John, all of you. What are those hard calluses on your palms if not silent votes? Every one of them was a painful blister, I know, but I haven’t heard one complaint.”
She brushed her hand across her eyes, and smiled a little wavering smile. “Now, to go back to the business at hand, the diminishing funds and no visible income. John, I have been doing some thinking too. You’ll make a good profit on the beef cattle, but that’s months away. I still say, with due respect for Mr. Davies, that we need dairy cows on this place NOW. Twenty head of good milkers would give us enough income to live on. The time to buy them is now, before the war conditions send prices sky high. Then we have a backlog to depend on, come what may. The way this war is going, we may not like the things to come. We’ll be in it just as sure as God made little apples, and soon.”
“We are in it now, unofficially,” Father said with a wry smile. “All right, Mom, what kind? Jerseys?”
“I’d prefer Jerseys, but Holsteins do give twice as much milk. Mixed herd would be best. There are two good auctions next week, let’s go and see what we can pick up. We need a lot of machinery too; now is the time to buy it.”
Father smiled at her. “Litt’ woman talk big, huh? Okay, litt’ woman, we go see.” He caught Mother’s twinkle and laughed. “Who, me? I won’t open my mouth.”
Two weeks later half the stanchions were occupied by twenty Holsteins and two more Jerseys besides Daisy and Buttercup. The machine shed was full of rusty, disreputable pieces of farm machinery that Father got for almost nothing. He said that to take them apart, repair and re-paint them, would keep him busy during the coming winter months.
Days were already growing shorter; for dairy-farmers, as they were now, each day began hours before sunrise. Every morning at four, Father and Gran started milking. Dick wanted to take Gran’s place, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “Not on school days. You can relieve me on week-ends.” Father went around with swollen, painful hands for the first week or two, and so did Gran. Neither of them complained. They were getting enough milk to show a small clear profit and that was worth a little discomfort.
Time seemed to fly. Frost had made brilliant torches out of some of the trees on the mountainside, then slowly the whole valley turned into a riot of yellow and flaming red. October came and went. Corn harvest began and the tall green forests of corn disappeared, leaving brown stubbled fields for cows to browse on. Mike again came every day, never tiring, always ready to laugh and to admire with shouts of glee every bit of progress on the farm. When he first saw the machinery, his face clouded. “You buy team next, t’en you no want Mike, huh?”
“We will always want you,” Father said, and meant it. “You are our best friend, Mike, we couldn’t get along without you.”
“Best friend,” Mike pondered the words. “T’at mean number one man almost like fam’ly? Aaah,” he beamed when Father nodded, “t’en okay.”
There was one more cornfield to cut, and one day Mike showed up to finish the job. But, instead of talking for an hour or so before work, as he usually did, he went straight out to the field and worked with an abandoned, concentrated fury. He slashed at the rows of corn from early morning until Gran finally had to call him for lunch. He came, his face dark, secretive, a strangely withdrawn face that seemed to Dick like the house of a friend that had been closed and shuttered overnight. It was Saturday, both children were home and Gran had baked a ham; a meal that Dick and Mike could never get enough of. Mike usually greeted his favorite dish with shouts of glee. This time he only gave it a far-away smile. Mother heaped up his plate; he sat, eyeing it, his high checked, dark, Slavic face a mask of puzzled concentration. Suddenly he pushed the plate away and looked at Father.
“John, me, Mike, gotta talk, no eat.”
Father, who had been working with him all morning and couldn’t get a word out of him, sighed: “Go ahead, Mike. Tell me what the trouble is.”
/>
“Two trouble, no one. Home, litt’ trouble. Linka cry like baby, all time. T’at no big trouble, woman cry like rain in summer, quick come, quick go. Big trouble is w’y she cry. T’at w’at Mike gotta talk to you.” Mike’s eyes were on Father, two dark, burning pools of puzzled, hurt misery, like the eyes of a wounded deer. “Litt’ Mike, my boy, he no work in Wash’n’ton now. Litt’ Mike now soldier in . . .” his hands, describing the swooping flight of a plane, helped him to find the elusive word, “in fly’ machine.”
“Airplane,” Father corrected quickly, a hardly noticeable frown silencing the beginning of a giggle from Janet. “You mean your son was drafted? But he is over thirty, isn’t he?”
“He no draft. He no have to go. Postman say he . . . enlist. He read letter. It come yest’day. Postman he read to me. Want read to me, John? Ma’be Mike no understand. Ma’be postman read upside down, huh?”
A much crumpled envelope, with a British stamp, changed hands over the table. Father opened the letter and began to read:
“To a kind man, who is a friend . . .” He stopped. His eyes were racing over the lines.
“W’at it say, John, w’at it say?” Mike edged forward on his chair. Father cleared his throat, then looked at Gran. “Lend me your glasses, Mom, I can’t see very well. Gettin’ old, Mike,” he smiled at the worried face.
Gran, puzzled, but silent, passed her glasses to him, whose eyes, she and all the others knew, had never failed before. For the moment only Dick understood this sparring for time, because he was reading the letter over Father’s shoulder. The typewritten lines ‘said:
“To a kind man who is a friend to Mike Mogor, my father:
“Please read the enclosed letter to him, please read it slowly and gently and, if he is bewildered, comfort him and my Mother, as well as you can. I will be overseas, fighting with the advance guard, by the time this letter reaches him, but don’t tell him that. Not yet. Tell him I have enlisted; tell him anything that will keep him from worrying too much. Should there be news of me at some future time that they will have to know, if you are their friend, try to explain to them that I had to go. I had to try to keep the frightfulness he had once saved me from, from his beloved America. It must not reach and touch this land, this haven, this refuge, this foster mother to all of us who had escaped from the greed, the horror, and the cruelty of those who are now on the march again. Try to explain, should the need arise, that this, my going voluntarily, is my only way of saying: ‘Thank you, America,’ saying it for myself, for him and for the countless millions who have found peace here and human kindness. God bless you all.
“Lt. Michael Mogor, R.C.A.”
Mike was getting impatient. “Read loud, John. You and postman no very smart, huh? He try read hard like you, get red eye, all water. Give letter to Deck. He smart.”
Father handed the enclosed letter to Dick; without a glance or a word he trusted him to know what not to say and Dick’s heart swelled. He began to read:
“Dear Pop;
“I am not coming home for my vacation. I am getting too fat and too lazy, sitting all the time, telling guys like you what to do on the farm. That is a job for an old man. Now I have a new job, the kind big guys like me, should be doing. I am taking nice big, shining ‘fly’ machines’ to Europe; for our friends over there, to help them lick the daylights out of the ‘crazy people’ who gave you so much trouble in the old country.
“You know I always liked ‘fly’ machines.’ I told you long ago, when I was a little Mike, that some day I was going to fly in one of them.
“It will be a long time until I come home again. But some day I’ll come, so keep your chin up, Mike Mogor, my father, and don’t let Mamushka cry too much.
“So long old man, be seeing you.
Your loving son
Litt’ Mike”
“Same t’ing postman say?” asked Mike, searching the faces around him.
“Same thing, Mike. He is a soldier—a real soldier. He is a swell guy, Mike, like his old man who taught him how to be a man.” Father folded up the typewritten sheet and quietly slipped it under his napkin. The other, he put back into the envelope and handed to Mike. “Anybody who reads this, will tell you the same thing. Don’t worry, Mike, he’ll be all right.”
“You say he do good t’ing, John? T’is country no fight. T’is country good, smile alla time, no fight like crazy. W’y soldier? We no need many soldier wit’ gun go boom, boom. W’y litt’ Mike go be soldier?”
Tell him anything to keep them from worrying too much, the words flashed into Dick’s mind and he said quickly:
“He is not a soldier with a gun. He just . . . teaches young Americans to fly. Shows them how to fly, so the Germans won’t dare come over here. Honest! And he takes airplanes to Europe . . . gee, that’s a wonderful job! He flies like a big bird over the ocean . . . I wish I could go. Gee, how I wish I could go with him!”
“No gun?” was the only thing Mike was interested in. Both Father and Dick assured him: “No gun. Airplane.”
“Aaah.” The sun of his smile was peeking out again. “Postman no smart. He say, litt’ Mike brave soldier boy, fight for America.”
Father leaned forward. “Listen close, Mike. There might be a war. We might have to fight. Would you stop him from fighting if America needed him?”
“No. If t’is country need litt’ Mike to fight, me no stop him. Me tell Linka, if country need litt’ Mike: ‘We have boy for t’irty and one, ma’be two year. Good country make lit? Mike strong and smart. T’irty year long time; good time, we all happy. In old country we have boy ma’be ten year, then he die. Many, many lit? children die, t’ey hungry, t’ey die from bullet ma’be. I say, okay America, now litt’ Mike do somet’ing for good country, huh? Aaah, now me, Mike, feel good. Me know w’at trouble is, me no more afraid.”
Gran smiled at him. “Do you feel like eating now? Goodness gracious,” she exclaimed, looking at all the untouched plates, “I might as well start all over again, stone cold, every mouthful.”
She gathered the plates and heated them up in the oven. When she was ready to serve, the shout that greeted the ham, sounded like their happy Mike again. He fell to and polished off his plate in record time, then beamed at them. “Now me full, no room for worry. Me go tell Linka boy do right, huh?”
When the screen door slammed after him, Father read the slip of paper he had hidden to the whole family.
“I kept it,” he spoke into the silence. “Some careless person, it was almost myself, might read the whole thing to him, too soon. I hope—I hope with all my heart that some day we can burn it. Some day, when that fine young American who wrote it, comes back home.”
“I hope for that, too,” Gran said. “But burn it? Never. It is as immortal a testimony of a real patriot as . . . as . . .”
Dick supplied the words Gran was searching for:
“As Nathan Hale’s saying: ‘I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’ ”
“Yes. And, from a foster child of America, that letter is a tribute that should be engraved on immortality.”
CHAPTER XIII
AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE
AFTER corn harvest was over, Father and Mike began cutting and hauling and sawing up firewood to see both houses through
the winter. For winter was very close by; every night it came snooping into the valley, spreading gossamer carpets of hoarfrost on every field and meadow. The pale, early morning sun gathered them up again and rolled them into the beds of brooks to form long, wavering strips of fog.
Gran insisted on at least another stove in the house all the open fireplaces were lovely, of course, but they ate up wood far out of proportion to the heat they gave. Father came home one day with a nice, fat, pot-bellied chunkstove and, with Mike’s help, set it up in the “back parlor”; a lovely, cozy room now that Father had painted it and Mother had wrought her own miracles with gay chintz and lacy curtains. It didn’t seem possible that it was ever the dreary, d
irty room they had spent their first night in. The front parlor, the largest room in the house, had the most beautiful fireplace of all. The mantel was paneled and carved with a delicate pattern of wreaths and stars around a carved eagle on the front panel. This was to be their holiday room. Mother had furnished it with the best pieces they had; deep, comfortable chairs and a large sofa from their apartment, all dressed in new, colorful slip-covers. The queer little stands and tables she had bought at the auction, were not antiques, neither were they new, but, painted soft pastel colors, they served well for lampstands and to hold the odds and ends that make a room really home.
The kitchen, that for months had been the only room they used in the daytime, was still their favorite place. It was the heart of the house; a warm, pulsing heart with old Eureka glowing and busy from dawn to nightfall. On these cold November afternoons, there was nothing as fine as coming in from outdoors, chilled and always a little hungry, to snuggle up close to Eureka, savoring the tantalizing odors of supper in the making. The kitchen was large enough for most of the indoor chores; this was the place where Mother did her ironing and mending, where Gran concocted her own miracles out of flour and sugar and spices that kept cookie jars filled all the time, in spite of raids by Dick and Janet.
As days grew shorter, Father brought in smaller pieces, parts of machinery to scrape and sandpaper, and there was where he and Dick spent long hours in a corner, oiling, mending, polishing harness that also came from an auction. Big, heavy harness for big, heavy horses that they were going to get some day. Father had been daydreaming of a tractor but soon argued himself out of the idea. Sometimes he argued aloud although no one contradicted him. One evening he looked up and said: