A Home in the Country

by Sheelagh Mawe

‘Go ahead then, get beat up,’ Cathy said and started praying by herself. She’d just begun the second decade of the rosary when the door between the kitchen and the office banged open and we heard the Old Man talking on the telephone. Gasping, Cathy forgot all about her Hail Marys and her Our Fathers and dived for the top of the stairs. ‘All the while I been here,’ she marvelled in a whisper, ‘I ain’t never once heard him talk on the telephone. Not one time.’

  In a minute or two she was back, giggling. ‘He’s got a brother of his comin’ out on the bus with him next Friday night to help bring in Agnes her water.’

  I couldn’t understand why that made her so happy. ‘If I was grown-up I wouldn’t let Agnes have any water,’ I said. ‘Not ever. Not even to drink.’

  ‘That’s ’cause you’re dumber than dumb,’ Cathy said. ‘His brother comin’ out means we’ll have comp’ny. Comp’ny means Agnes can’t go gettin’ all mean and smiley on us. Comp’ny means we’ll get to eat!’

  Cathy was right. Friday we cooked all day and by the end of it, all our heads were covered with lumps and bruises from the butt-end of knives, pots and pans, and the rolling pin. But then the man we were to call Uncle Larry walked in with the Old Man and we got to sit down and eat!

  Studying Uncle Larry across the table gave us a good idea of what the Old Man might have looked like a long time ago. Uncle Larry’s face was ruddy, his hair thick, and he didn’t wear glasses. He laughed a lot and talked to Agnes the way we one day dreamed of talking to her ourselves. He made her spitting mad was what he did and the madder she got, the harder he laughed and the more we liked him.

  ‘You sure got a fine-looking bunch of kids workin’ for you, Agnes,’ he began, pointing with his knife at Cathy. ‘’specially that ’un. Reg’lar beauty, she is. Makes me wish I’d had me a girl.’

  ‘A tomcat like you with a kid?’ Agnes spat. ‘Humph! More’n likely it’d end up like this bunch, homeless trash.’

  ‘Yeah, but homeless trash sure pays good, don’t it, Agnes?’ Uncle Larry countered. ‘Bet your mattress is all over lumps with what-all you got hid away inside of it, huh?’

  I came bolt upright in my chair at those words. It was money making that mattress all over lumps? I’d always wondered. But … how could he know that?

  The other kids, forks halfway to their mouths, waited for Agnes to explode at him for saying such a thing but she just turned so red her eyes watered while Uncle Larry rocked with noisy laughter. Holding her gaze firmly with his own, as though more than anything he’d like to see her try and stop him, he picked up the serving dishes and piled more food on our plates than we’d ever had at one sitting.

  Agnes didn’t say a word about the food, but she got back at him saying, ‘What you tryin’ to do, huh, Larry? Turn ’em into hogs like your own self?’

  Uncle Larry looked around the table at us, his eyebrows raised in mock dismay. ‘You hear what she done called me?’ he spluttered. ‘Me? Lovable Larry? A hog ain’t exactly what my lady friends call me, Agnes,’ he preened. ‘My lady friends call me—’

  But Agnes didn’t want to know what his lady friends called him. Instead she was on her feet, slamming her chair under the table, saying, ‘What I need to know, Larry, is did you come out here to eat and talk, or dig me a well?’

  Uncle Larry’s eyebrows went up again. ‘You better start talking prettier than that to ol’ Lovable Larry, Agnes, else there ain’t gonna be no diggin’ and no water and what’s your Betty gonna say about that?’ He rocked with laughter at the expression that came on her face at the mention of Betty. A look of both disbelief and anger.

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ he spluttered, his tongue and fingers meanwhile working at particles of food wedged between his teeth. ‘Been meaning to tell you ’bout me’n Betty having us real nice long chats three or four nights a week. The way she tells it, I’m your last chance at running water, Agnes. Says neither her nor none of them boys of yours is coming near so long as you keep filling the place up with homeless trash and don’t put in running water. So how ’bout that, Agnes?’

  Agnes tossed her head. ‘I guess nobody got around to tellin’ you the armed services ain’t givin’ out weekend passes like before.’

  Uncle Larry gasped in mock amazement. ‘Is that right? Then I guess I better have me a talk with the Pres-i-dent ask him how come I got to have two of yours at my place just this past weekend? You s’pose they was AWOL?’

  Agnes bit her lip and spun away to the stove where she took out her humiliation on the pots and pans.

  Laughing uproariously Uncle Larry slapped the Old Man on the shoulder, ‘Let’s get to it then, boy, long’s I’m here!’ he said. He shook his head and sighed, ‘Still can’t figure how come I let myself get talked into comin’ out. Sooner I’m back in town, happier I’m gonna be.’

  He turned to the boys, ‘Want you guys out there, too, hear? Gonna need all the help we can get.’

  The hole they started digging was right outside the kitchen and our bedroom was above the kitchen. As darkness fell the men strung up a light bulb that reflected on our ceiling and it was comforting for us to lie in bed listening to Uncle Larry and the boys talking and laughing. In the darkness, Agnes sat on the edge of the bed watching the work going on down below. Her weight made the bed tip so badly I had to cling to the edge of my side of the mattress with all my fingers to keep from rolling into her but I comforted myself knowing that, if I did let go and Agnes yelled and hit me, all I had to do was call for Uncle Larry and he would come up and rescue me.

  And Saturday morning there was further comfort knowing Agnes couldn’t get started on her usual, spiteful routines at the chicken table. Not with the men digging close by, she couldn’t.

  After lunch Agnes amazed us by doing something Cathy had always sworn she never would: all decked out in her pink Knitting-Bee dress and her hair combed, she set out to catch the bus to town and deliver the chickens herself.

  As she trudged away through the woods carrying her heavy load, the sun, as if by magic, seemed to shine in a kindlier manner, a breeze stirred the trees, and the men took time to lean on their shovels and kid with the boys.

  Moving away from the hole they’d been digging they headed for the barn – us kids in chattering, giggling pursuit – where they broke open a crate that had been there ever since James and I arrived. Inside was a little machine they said was a pump. They carried it into the kitchen and nailed it to a wooden stand they’d built on the floor next to the sink. Late in the afternoon when Agnes returned and saw it she actually laughed out loud. Hugging herself with glee she said, ‘Never thought I’d see the day I’d have me runnin’ water right here in my own kitchen!’

  At supper, Uncle Larry said, ‘Nothing comes up out the ordinary, Agnes, we’ll get your water hooked up tomorrow.’ He looked around the table. ‘Guess you won’t be needin’ so many kids to run the place then, huh? What say I take a couple of these here girls back to town, put ’em to work for me, huh? What say, girls?’

  All three of us girls stopped chewing at the enormity of what he’d just said. Would he really take us? But wait. He said a couple. That meant one of us would get left behind.

  ‘Big a fool as Bennings is,’ Agnes glowered, cutting short our rising hopes, ‘she ain’t that dumb.’

  Uncle Larry laughed – he must have thought it funny to tease little kids – and turned to the Old Man. ‘What say you and me get duded up and raise a little hell tonight, old guy? Saturday night don’t come round but once a week.’

  Instantly Agnes whirled away from the range to stare down on the Old Man. ‘You ain’t going no place, Walter!’ she growled. ‘You got that?’

  To Uncle Larry she spoke in a whiney kind of way. ‘Larry,’ she began, swaying her shoulders and acting like a bashful little kid, ‘You said – you promised, even – you was gonna bring me in my water. You go out raising hell tonight, you’ll be sleeping all day tomorrow.’

  Uncle Larry chuckled, ‘I was just putting you on, Agnes.’ Sticking
a toothpick between his teeth, tilting back in his chair, he looked her up and down slowly before adding, ‘Reckon I know as well as the next guy there ain’t no real women hereabouts anyways, Agnes. Figure I’d just as soon get finished up here quick so’s I can get back to town find me a whole bunch of cuties.’

  Sunday morning the hole outside the kitchen window was so deep the only way you could tell the digging was still in progress was by the shovels full of dirt flying out of it. Yet even with all six of us kids carrying the dirt away in buckets as fast as we could, there was still a mountain of it waiting to be moved.

  Late morning the dirt unexpectedly stopped coming out of the hole and the men, covered head to toe in dirt and sweat, came out instead. They sat down on the porch steps.

  Agnes stormed through the screen door. ‘How come you’re settin’?’ she wanted to know, ‘You done?’

  ‘You tell her, Larry,’ the Old Man said.

  Uncle Larry laughed his big loud laugh, ‘Looks like old Wally here done got his numbers wrong, Agnes. We done run out of pipe.’

  Agnes gasped, ‘You settin’ there tellin’ me I ain’t gettin’ my water today? Is that what you’re tellin’ me?’

  ‘That’s what I’m settin’ here tellin’ you, Agnes, you ain’t gettin’ your water,’ Uncle Larry said. ‘Leastways not this week, you ain’t.’

  Agnes started screaming she had to have her water. Today! She said, ‘I talked to Betty on the telephone last night and she said she might could come out next weekend if’n there was water so what am I supposed to tell her now, huh? That her old man and her uncle can’t do nothing right? That all I got to show for a weekend of cooking and aggravation is a hole in the ground and a pile of dirt?’

  Uncle Larry yelled right back at her to shut up and mind her tongue. ‘I’ll call Betty tonight when I get back in town and tell her what happened,’ he roared. ‘Meantime get back in that kitchen of yours fix some food for me’n Wally and these kids else by God I’ll put you in that hole and pile that dirt in on top of you.’

  Agnes had no choice but to fix food for Uncle Larry and the Old Man but ‘the kids ain’t got time to eat,’ she glowered. ‘They got to get out haulin’. Get water on them vegetables else how’m I supposed to feed ’em come winter?’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Larry said, and then he was holding his sides laughing, ‘Look at it this way, Agnes, you get to have me back next weekend. You ever think you’d get that lucky?’

  Uncle Larry and the Old Man finished their lunch and went to sit on the porch of the cabin. They put their feet up on the porch rail and a bottle of whisky passed back and forth between them. We saw them every time we staggered by with a bucket of water.

  Danny came up with an idea. ‘Cathy,’ he said, ‘on account of Uncle Larry liking you best, go ask him for a quarter so one of us can run to the store real quick get us each a candy bar.’

  Cathy shook her head, ‘Uh-uh. Not me. What if Agnes calls us in and I’m not here? I might could miss supper as well as lunch. I ain’t askin’ Uncle Larry for nothin’.’

  We began working on a different strategy to approach the men but just then Uncle Larry stood up and called and waved for us all to come over to the cabin porch.

  Did he have candy? Money? What…?

  He waited till we were all lined up in front of him before sitting himself sideways on the porch rail, one foot swinging.

  ‘Me’n your daddy has had us a idea,’ he began. ‘Gonna give you all a treat. Gonna have us a game of hide and seek with candy bars for the winners! What say? Sound like fun?’

  He winked, looked over at the house, put his finger to his lips, ‘Gets us all away from old you-know-who, don’t it?’

  ‘Yeah!’ we chorused. ‘Sure does! Let’s go!’

  All of us except Cathy. Flat out, she said, ‘We can’t. Agnes … Mother … she’ll be real mad if we quit haulin’.’

  ‘Ha! She gets mad, I’ll get madder!’ Uncle Larry said, standing up and thumping his chest. ‘OK, go on now and hide. Boys go one way, girls t’other. Me’n your Daddy’s gonna count to one hundred real slow give you time to get far, far away!’

  Dropping their buckets right where they were, the boys ran towards the barn. I saw Cathy look over at the house and knew she was going to hide close by in case Agnes did call. Well, I wouldn’t! I didn’t care if Agnes beat me. I wanted a candy bar so bad I’d begun to drool. It didn’t look as though Sally was going anywhere so I called out to her to come with me. ‘I know a real good place down by the well where there’s that nice big clump of pine trees we can hide under,’ I said.

  It was cool in our hiding place and nice to let the dried-up pine needles slide through our hot, sweaty fingers. We heard the men’s calling voices fade away in the distance and Sally giggled. She had such a lovely giggle, Sally, one that was almost never heard. She said, ‘It’s gonna take ’em a while to find us here!’

  That worried me. ‘Maybe we shoulda hid some place closer,’ I said. ‘I’m hungry! I got to get that candy bar pretty darn quick. And I’m gonna ask Uncle Larry to write a letter to my folks to come get me away from this terrible, awful place.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Sally said, her eyes lighting up. ‘Only I’m gonna ask if I can go live with him on account of he said he liked girls and I sure like him!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I like him, too, only … only I wish he’d just given us the candy and not made us stop haulin’ to hide. Agnes’ll be worse’n ever after he leaves.’

  Sally’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah … ’ she whimpered. ‘And tomorrow’s Monday. We gotta do the wash….’ She yawned and rubbed her eyes even as a tear leaked out.

  ‘You can’t go to sleep,’ I warned. ‘If they don’t find us real soon we’ll have to go find them!’

  ‘I ain’t,’ Sally mumbled, and slept.

  Now what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave her there, could I? But if I stayed we might never get found and then we wouldn’t get any candy bars and more than likely, no supper either. Wait! What was that noise? I turned around and here came Uncle Larry pushing his way through the low-hanging branches. I was so happy to see him my mouth started watering again and I couldn’t even talk. All I could do was smile and smile.

  He flopped down beside me. ‘You girls sure give me a run around, I swear!’ he panted. ‘I been lookin’ everywhere! What’s this? Sally’s sleepin’?’

  ‘I told her not to!’ I said. ‘I’ll wake her up now. She wants her candy bar and we want to ask you—’

  Uncle Larry grabbed my hand before it touched Sally. ‘Leave her be!’ he said. ‘I need to rest a spell. I’m all wore out diggin’ that damn well and chasin’ you girls all over hell and gone.’

  He slid closer to me and stretched out and … all of a sudden he didn’t seem so nice. Close up I could see his dirt-encrusted face, his bloodshot eyes, the sweat streaming down into the stubble on his chin and it seemed odd to me that a grown-up man would get that hot and out of breath chasing after a couple of little kids.

  He smelled, too! Worse even than the Old Man because his whisky breath mingled with the stink of his sweat.

  I wanted to move away but what if he got mad? Uncle Larry propped himself up on one elbow and looked around. ‘You girls sure found yourselves a dandy hidin’ place right here,’ he grinned. ‘Nobody’d find you ’less they was lookin’ real hard.’

  He reached out and put his hand inside the bib of my overalls and I didn’t like that. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to put their hands inside kids’ clothes, were they?

  ‘Reckon you got a mite of growing to do up here yet, ain’t you child?’ he said. ‘How old did Agnes tell me you was?’

  ‘I’m going on seven,’ I lied, leaning away.

  ‘Hey!’ he frowned. ‘Don’t go pullin’ away from your Uncle Larry like that! Come on now, move back close and give me a nice big kiss.’

  Ugh! I didn’t want to give him a kiss. I leaned away further still but he grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands
and pulled me close and forced his tongue between my teeth. His stubble scratched my face and his whisky-drool filled my mouth and it was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me.

  I struggled to get away but he held me tighter yet with one hand while the other went down between my legs inside my overalls and his fingers – those filthy, mud-caked fingers – were poking inside of me and it hurt and I fought even harder to get away.

  Uncle Larry groaned and, struggling to his knees, took both my hands in one of his and held them tight while his other hand unbuttoned his fly. His trousers fell down around his knees and he was holding his thing – a big red one – in his other hand. ‘Bet you ain’t never seen one this big before, huh?’ he laughed. ‘What they call these here in England?’ he asked.

  I didn’t know. Didn’t even know if men in England kept big, ugly things like that in their trousers. All I’d ever seen before was James’ and it was small and white.

  Uncle Larry arched his back and thrust towards my face so all I could see were his dirty fingers with the black fingernails clutching himself. ‘Kiss it!’ he panted.

  I turned my head away as far as it would go and saw that Sally was awake. ‘Make him stop!’ I gasped. Sally didn’t move. ‘Go get James then,’ I pleaded. And still Sally didn’t move, just blinked and yawned, and somehow, to me, that seemed the worst part of the whole situation – that Sally wouldn’t help me.

  ‘I said kiss it,’ Uncle Larry growled. ‘I’m ready, boy…. You want a candy bar, don’t you?’

  I was so scared I was choking and crying and struggling all at the same time and I couldn’t answer but I shook my head ferociously, meaning, ‘No! I won’t kiss it. Not even for a candy bar. I won’t! Let me go!’

  Uncle Larry took one of my hands and put it underneath his so we were both gripping his penis and his hold on my hand was so tight it hurt. Soon he was panting and twisting and moving back and forth ever faster while some kind of sticky looking wet came spurting out of him.

  After what seemed like forever, the panting and the shaking and the wetting stopped. Uncle Larry let go of my hand and flopped down beside me. Quickly, I plunged my hand deep in the pine needles to get rid of the feel of him and started inching away on my backside.