The handrail improved Meg’s spirits so much that Hallie berated herself for not thinking of it earlier. She benefited from it, too. Knowing how much Meg hated to hold on to her had made the service an unpleasant duty. When it snowed, Hallie cleaned off the rails first thing in the morning, shoveled off the steps, and cleared a path to the outhouse. During storms, sometimes she had to do this several times.
They were in the heart of winter, with the worst and longest storms, but slowly the days were lengthening. On bright days, the sun smiled closer to the earth. Buried seeds would soon begin to sprout, only it was best that didn’t happen till the deep freezes were over. When weather warmed enough to encourage early growth, a late freeze could destroy the tender plants. Winterkill, it was called. Sometimes Hallie wondered whether her love for Garth would be like that; frozen before it had a chance to flourish in the open. But this secret feeling had rooted itself so deeply and inexorably in her being that she couldn’t believe it would die before she did, though it might well be mutilated, chopped off at the surface, and forced to grow gnarled and misshapen without the blessing of open air and sunlight.
Hallie was pumping water for the wash one bright frosty morning late in January when she heard a faint, curious sound, repeated over and over. It sounded like a number of people blowing across the open tops of bottles.
“Oh, it’s the prairie chickens,” Meg cried when Hallie described it. “They have a booming ground at the edge of the Old Prairie. Daddy curved the field away from it. He said the birds used it long before he was born and will be using it after we’re gone, as long as it’s not plowed up.”
“Booming?” Jackie asked. “Boom-boom?”
“Not that kind,” said Meg, laughing. “You’ve got to see it! The males, dozens of them, strut and show off for the hens. They raise their eyebrows, open their tails like fans, stick up the feathers on the backs of their necks, and blow up the big reddish air sacs on their throats that they boom with. They’re just starting now but by spring they’ll be at it before dawn every day and again in the evening.”
“Can we watch ’em?” begged Jackie.
“Sure.” Then Meg remembered. She glanced with loathing from her quilt-covered legs to Jackie’s eager face. “It’s a long way on crutches, but I can stop and rest.”
“I’ll bring a stool for you,” Hallie offered. “That way you can watch till the booming stops.”
Meg looked as if she wanted to refuse, but common sense prevailed. She said grudgingly, “You’ll enjoy watching it, too.”
“I won’t stay long. I need to get back to the washing. But when I don’t hear any booming for a while, I’ll come to carry the stool home.”
The sun sparkled on the frosted earth of the planted field and then on the brown grass and dried sunflower and thistle stalks of the Old Prairie. Meadowlarks rose singing.
“Shaft says they’re calling, ‘I’ll eat your wheat, young man!,’” said Meg. “I’m glad they stay and sing all year. Summer birds are nice but it would be awful if there weren’t any that stayed through the winter.”
“Looky! There’s a bur-bur-burrowin’ owl!” Jackie cried.
“It’s got long legs for such a little owl,” giggled Meg. Hallie put the stool down and Meg eased herself onto it. “Oh, there’s another one peeking out! Look how that white V curves down between their big yellow eyes! This one looks like he’s wearing a high-collared white vest with a black ribbon necktie!”
“They got a big mess outside their hole,” Jackie observed. Near the entrance to the tunnel was a scattered heap of bits of bone, hair, parts of unlucky insects and rodents and owl pellets. He wrinkled his nose. “Luke says they line their bur-burrows with dry cow or horse manure.”
“The man Daddy bought this place from said there used to be a great huge prairie-dog town that ran from here to about where the house is. There were hundreds of mounds. Snakes and burrowing owls lived in tunnels the prairie dogs didn’t use anymore. I guess the snakes ate eggs and owls and baby dogs sometimes, and the owls ate little dogs, but the town was home to a lot of creatures. The man plowed it up.”
Jackie’s eyes got big. “What—what happened to the owls and dogs?” he asked as if he didn’t really want to know.
“I hope a lot of them got away and started a new town somewhere else. But prairie dogs dive into their holes when there’s danger. I’m afraid plenty of them were killed by the plow.” Meg swallowed and her eyes glistened as she got back up on her crutches. “Daddy wouldn’t have plowed up their homes. I’m glad these owls—or their great-great-great-great grandparents—didn’t lose their burrow.”
It didn’t seem the time to say that if someone hadn’t got rid of the prairie dogs, the little animals would have feasted on the MacLeod grain. Getting humans for neighbors—at least the kind that settled in one place—must be as disastrous for wildlife as war was for people.
This realization made Hallie especially glad that Garth had left this stretch of wildland along the creek. She prayed for the birds’ and animals’ sakes that it would always stay like this, that whatever happened to people, the prairie chickens would still be booming hundreds of years from now.
The booming sounded now like the lower notes of dozens of ocarinas. “Let’s stop behind that sandhill plum thicket,” Meg whispered. “That way we can watch without scaring them.”
Crouching, Hallie fixed the stool firmly behind the bushes and hunkered down at the side. The males were too intent on making themselves look big and handsome to pay much attention to anything except another male that came too close.
Erecting tall feathers that grew on the sides and backs of their necks into ruffs that looked like Indian warbonnets, the cocks not only boomed from their reddish air sacs, but cackled and clucked as they patted their feet and strutted around their chosen territory. Now and then one male challenged another. Air sacs deflated, wings lowered, they advanced with outstretched necks and flew at each other like roosters with much beating of wings.
More noise than damage, Hallie decided, as several flurries subsided. If a hen pecked her way among the males, they boomed and pranced even more frenziedly. Sometimes, somehow, a hen showed willingness to accept one of the parading gallants, and there was another flurry either on the booming ground or off in the grass.
It was fascinating, but Hallie had water heating on the range and a pile of sheets and clothing to wash. “I’ll come back after they stop booming,” she murmured to Meg. “Or you can start home when you’re ready, and I’ll fetch the stool later.”
“Maybe we could leave the stool here,” Meg suggested. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes glowed. “Then Jackie and I could come whenever we wanted to.”
“We shouldn’t leave the stool outside, but there are some apple crates in the shed. I could put one here and another where you could stop and watch the owls.”
Meg gave her a suspicious look but finally said, “That would be handy. Thank you.”
As she might thank a servant. But it was good for her to be outside, to get interested in the world beyond the house. And good for Jackie, too. Both owls were perched on their burrow as Hallie passed by. They stared at her solemnly, without the slightest fear.
“I’m glad you live here,” she said. “Don’t let your cousin, that great horned owl down by the creek, catch you! I heard him hoo-hoo-hoot last night, and I suppose it won’t be long till he has a family to feed.”
Meg and Jackie spent hours that day on a letter to Luke that had drawings of the owls and prairie chickens and told him about them. After that, they all listened for the booming which happened more frequently as February wore on. Most “boom” mornings found a bundled-up Meg and Jackie making their way to the grounds, where they spent an hour or so watching.
Much as Hallie yearned for winter’s end and Garth’s return, she marked off the days with mounting anxiety. Meg seemed no closer to walking than right after the accident. When the Donnellys stopped by with valentines from Meg’s schoolmates and
Miss Howell, Mary said hesitantly, “Meg, dear, Miss Howell wonders if you can’t come back to your classes. She’ll help you when you need it, and so will the other children—”
“No! I won’t go back till I can walk.” Patches of scarlet burned on Meg’s cheeks. “I won’t have them making fun or treating me like a cripple!”
“But honey, you’re missing so much school—”
“I’m getting A-pluses on all my papers.”
“Yes, but—” Mary floundered and Mike added, “You need to be learning alongside other kids, Meg, hearing what they think and deciding whether you agree with it or not. There’s a sight more to education than knowing what’s in the books.”
Meg hunched her shoulders. “I’ll catch up with all of that when I can walk.” Her gaze was defiant but Hallie caught a hint of dread beneath the girl’s bravado. “Prob’ly I can start back by Easter.”
Leaning forward, Mary took Meg’s hands. “Darling girl, I hate to say this, but what if—well, what if you can’t ever get along without your crutches?”
Meg wrenched loose and violently wheeled her chair around. “I won’t be a cripple!” she wailed. “I won’t! I won’t!” She couldn’t maneuver the chair past the radio to reach the front room. Sobbing, she had to halt at the stairs.
Mary gave Hallie a helpless, frightened look before she followed Meg and bent to put an arm around her. “Meg, we all want to see you walking—running. I’m sorry I upset you. But Miss Howell—”
“Tell her I’ll come to school when I can.” Meg’s voice was muffled against her sleeve. “The valentines I made for her and the kids are with my homework right there on top of the radio.”
Cottonwoods and willows budded along the creek. Bright blades of wheat sprang from dormancy and tinted fields a hopeful fresh green. Wild geese gabbled and honked and gossiped as they flew overhead in twinkling skeins and warming, lengthening days painted the gentle slopes of the Old Prairie with masses of white, pink, and blue and purple locoweeds, vetches and wood betony, a pretty purple plant known by the unpretty name of lousewort. Creamy wild indigo and perky blue-eyed grass sprang up to catch the eye while bird’s-foot violets grew close to the earth. Soon there were Easter daisies, snowy beardstongue, and purple-red sweetpealike blooms of crazyweed rising from silvery pointed leaves.
The Donnellys were in the MacLeod kitchen when the radio news proclaimed that “Ma” Ferguson, governor of Texas, was trying to squelch the KKK by banning the wearing of masks in public.
“It’ll take more than that to cure the rascals,” growled Mike. “But at least it’s a step in the right direction. Those speeches Quent Raford makes up in Topeka! They sound all fine and patriotic, but if you listen close, he’s talking against Catholics and Jews and Indians and black folks and conscientious objectors, ’specially the ones like the Mennonites that speak German.”
“Some people around here agree with him.” Mary’s happy, open face clouded.
Mike closed his big hand over hers. “Aw, sweetheart, I don’t think Mrs. Brockett saw you coming out of the mercantile the other day.”
“She didn’t want to, that’s for certain. I had to get right in front of her before she’d speak. And Shirley MacAfee! We brought the treats for the valentine party, remember? I heard her telling Miss Howell that she should be teaching the children how dangerous it was to have the Pope in Rome telling American Catholics what to do.”
“Just talk,” Mike said.
“The Klan’s done more than talk in a lot of places.” Mary shivered. “I’m sure glad our place is paid for. Look at all the Mennonites and Catholics and folks with foreign names that Raford’s foreclosed on this past year!”
Mike sighed and spread his hands. “He’s keeping most of those farms for himself, but when he does sell, it’s to folks like that weaselly Cotton Harris.”
Hallie stiffened. “Cotton Harris bought a farm here?”
“Between Rafords’ and town,” Mike snorted. “Though it don’t sound like he aims to grow much but trouble. He’s always speechifyin’ to one bunch or another, blamin’ low wheat prices on everything but what does cause ’em.”
“It all started with the war,” Mary said. “Folks over the ocean couldn’t grow their own grain during the war, and our farmers were supposed to feed the world. They broke a lot of virgin sod that they knew wouldn’t produce very well and went in debt on machinery to farm every acre they could with a shortage of hands.”
“Some of that machinery wore out before it was paid for,” Mike continued. “But us farmers have a hard time gettin’ it through our heads that the boom’s over. Europe’s growin’ its own food again. Even Americans don’t eat as much bread and cereal as they did before townfolks got worried about stayin’ thin.”
“The price of wheat is half what it was in the good years,” Mary said. “So farmers plant more to make the same money—and the more wheat there is, the more the price drops.”
Mike got to his feet and gave Mary a hug. “We’re healthy, eatin’, wearin’ shoes in the winter, and our place is paid for.” He chuckled and kissed the freckles on her nose, bringing the little girls into the family embrace. “You know, Mrs. Donnelly, I wouldn’t trade what we’ve got for everything Quent Raford has or ever hopes to have!”
It would take a strange person indeed not to want to be part of a family like theirs. Hallie tried to imagine Garth putting his arms around her like that, tried to imagine what their children would look like. She gave it up. She couldn’t picture Garth so relaxed with a woman, so happily confident.
He was like someone burned so badly that he would rather freeze than get close enough to a fire for warmth. Would he ever get over his pain, or would the winter in his heart blight the roots of love in her own, the love that yearned to break through the secret darkness and flourish in the sun?
Jackie reported that he could see the tufts of the great horned owl sticking above the nest in the biggest cottonwood. Her mate brought food for their young and took care of them while she went hunting, a very different arrangement from that of the prairie chickens. The hens alone watched over and fed the fluffy, openmouthed results of early spring’s clamorous booming. The burrowing owls hadn’t brought their babies outside yet, but hurried in and out of their burrow with insects and tiny birds and mice.
“Those burrowin’ owls go ‘Coo-coo Coo-coo,’” Jackie said. “I sat down to watch ’em, and you know what?” He gave an excited wriggle. “I could feel things growing, I could almost hear the roots and things shoving up through the ground!”
“Wacky Jackie!” Meg teased, but she gave him a fond hug.
Mike Donnelly brought over his team and plowed the weeds out of the wheat. Garth paid him to do this every year since as much as the MacLeods were gone, it wasn’t practical for them to keep horses. Garth’s fields were across the creek from the Donnellys’, and there were several places where a team could easily ford the shallow stream; so Mike went back and forth through the fields rather than come the long way around by the road and bridge.
Hallie spring-cleaned the house from top to bottom, scrubbing woodwork, washing windows and curtains and quilts, and waxing the floors again. She welcomed any excuse to be outside as the buffalo grass turned green, the wheat waved waist high, and the Old Prairie bloomed now with daisies, tall larkspur, purple coneflower, and wild roses.
One day after Jackie trundled the mail home in his wagon. Meg whooped and waved the letter she had just opened. “Daddy says they’ll be through with their work on the railroad in a few days! They’ll head straight home and get ready for the threshing run!”
The joy on Meg’s face was followed by one of fear. She got up from her wheelchair, took one step, and went down in a scramble of arms and legs.
“Meg!” Heart in her mouth, Hallie helped the girl sit up. “Thank goodness, it looks like you’re all right!”
“I’m not all right! I—I’m a cripple! I won’t be able to go on the run!”
“Maybe we can th
ink of something,” Hallie said.
“What?” Meg scorned. “I might drive the water wagon, but I can’t fill up the tank or pump it out.”
“I know it’s not what you’d like,” Hallie ventured, “but you can sit down to do quite a lot of cookshack chores—”
“I don’t want to—to peel potatoes and stir gravy and—and—that kind of dumb stuff!” Meg interrupted.
“You’d be helping just as much as if you were pitching spikes.”
Meg spun her chair so her back was to Hallie, but Hallie saw tears glint as they fell. Trying to cheer her as much as she could realistically, Hallie said, “If you want to travel with the crew, Meg, and it doesn’t hurt you to ride in someone’s flivver, I imagine your father would prefer that to leaving you here.”
“No one should be with a crew if they aren’t going to work,” Meg snuffled after a few minutes. “I—I’ll peel potatoes!”
You’re growing up, Hallie applauded silently, but knew Meg would resent her saying so. “Maybe Shaft will teach you how to make his burnt-sugar cake that Luke liked so much,” Hallie suggested. “You can practice a light touch with piecrusts and—”
Meg gave her such a pained, ferocious look that Hallie didn’t finish her attempt at consolation.
XX
The house was shining. Two applesauce walnut cakes mellowed on the top pantry shelf beside oatmeal cookies and a crock of gingerbread men Meg and Jackie had decorated. In case the men came home between meals, Hallie made slaw, potato salad, and three-bean salad fresh each day after Garth’s letter came. Early that spring she had planted hollyhock and four-o’clock seeds that Mary Donnelly gave her. Watered daily, the hollyhocks spiked higher than Jackie’s head and should bloom before long. Even now, their large green leaves softened the unpainted wood.
She had ordered three everyday dresses that spring when she ordered new coveralls and socks for Jackie. Now she began to wear the pretty, practical outfits with her new strap sandals. There was a ruffled blue-and-white baby-check gingham apron to wear with the linen-finish blue-green chambray, a dusty green apron for the leaf-print cotton pongee, and a striped ticking apron to go over the slate blue dimity. A day in the cookshack would wilt any clothes, but at least she would start out looking nice—and could hope Garth would notice.
The Unplowed Sky Page 29