The Bones of Plenty

by Lois Phillips Hudson

  Rose’s face was red with heat and nervousness. “Where on earth have you been?” she said. “What do you want me to put in this suitcase?”

  She was wearing her best winter dress for the trip. It was a hot day, but it was September, after all, and no decent woman would wear a summer dress to Bismarck in the last week of September. It was fine light wool plaid with a big collar and a low belt line.

  Will was as hot as she was. He had on his heavy black suit, with its thick vest. She had made him wear it because she wanted to make sure he would be warm enough when he wore it home again.

  She looked him over, from his hat, to the chain of his watch looped across his vest, to his freshly polished shoes. “Look at you!” she said. She snatched a whisk broom from the closet. “Come out on the porch.”

  She swept the bits of hay and straw from his suit. “Now take a rag and dust off your shoes. What ever made you go out in the fields after you had got all dressed up?”

  “What ever made you make me put all these glad rags on at six o’clock in the morning?” he teased her.

  “Because I thought it would keep you in the house! With no supper and no breakfast you oughtn’t to be moving around so much!”

  He had been ordered not to eat for twenty-four hours before the X-rays, which were to be made as soon as he got to the hospital.

  “I wanted to take a look at the mare and remind Stuart to put her in nights now. She could drop the foal in a week or so, or even sooner. And it’ll frost again any time now. We don’t want to lose the colt.… I think Stuart’s going to straighten up, Rose.… Just be a little easy with him. That’s the ticket, don’t you think?”

  “I think we ought to be going,” she said.

  He hauled his watch out. “It’s not due till eleven-fifteen. I make it only ten now.”

  “You’re ten minutes behind the clock and I set it with the radio this morning,” she said. It terrified her to think they might have depended on his watch. “It takes that old man half an hour to get far enough down the tracks to flag that fast train.”

  “Yes, but Stuart said he told him yesterday to be sure to stop it for us.”

  “Oh, you know he’ll forget. Come on, let’s go!”

  Stuart swung the suitcase up into the back of the truck and Will felt, for the hundredth time since Stuart had come home, a great pride at how strong the boy had grown. Nobody in the world—not even loggers or miners—grew stronger muscles than a thresherman. Stuart had hit the work at just the right time in his life, too. A few years earlier and he would have worked too hard and perhaps stunted himself a bit, even while he grew strong—the way Will had himself. A few years later and he would have been a little overripe to do the best job of hardening. But from eighteen to twenty—those were the years to make a man out of a boy, if he had the stuff.

  As for Will himself now—it was a relief not to be carrying the suitcase. It was even a relief to be able to admit, finally, that he was too miserable and too weak to walk fast or to stand up straight.

  Stuart got in under the wheel, Rose sat in the middle, and Will hauled himself up with his hands braced against the door frame, like an old man. He shook like an old man from the effort of getting his weight a mere three feet off the ground. Those muscles that had served him so well all his life were burdens now. He reminded himself that he was weak from hunger, even if he did not feel hungry.

  They had already had the first killing frost of the fall. This morning’s baking sun was a little ironic on the blackened stalks of the hollyhocks by the house and on the slender snapped necks of the heavy-headed sunflowers he had planted along the orchard fence to shade the strawberries.

  This year there had been only a few dehydrated berries, rich and sweet because they were so distilled. Next spring there would be enough for a shortcake or two. This year he had saved every one for Rachel’s babies. Just the look on Cathy’s baby face and the bright red berry stains all over her hands and cheeks and chin had been worth all the work he had gone to. Lucy’s reactions were pure bonus. She made every berry last a good five minutes, almost eating it seed by seed like a little goldfinch.

  He had covered the plants with straw and canvas just in time, only a few days before the heavy frost had come, and now they must be as hot as he was himself under this sun. Almost every year there would be as much as a month of Indian summer after the first frost, with several more frosts coming between the hot days. It was sometimes frustrating to swelter during the daylight hours long after the growing season was ended, and then have the temperature drop so far at night. Still, there was something about Indian summer that made him rejoice to shiver while he did the morning’s milking and then to sweat in the field a couple of hours later.

  There was something in the wild extremes that roused something in him—like the clamor in himself that responded to the clamor of the ducks and geese streaming south in their countless stately chains, or the clamor of the gold and scarlet leaves, hanging brilliantly dead in the brassy clamor of the sun itself. Let the sun make its daily withdrawal to the south, following the emerald heads of the mallards; let the sun go so far away that the green blood of plants froze black. He had red blood himself, and he would be there, ready for the sun when it came north again, waiting to hear the first mallard cries volley through the cold spring air.

  He had read one of the Happy Farmer’s musings on Indian summer only a day or so ago: “By gosh, I see the time is here, Again to feel the traitorous cheer, Brung by Old Sol, that Indian giver, Who laughs to see us sweat, then shiver.”

  The weak resignation of the poet offended him; there ought to be something better than that to say about Indian summer—something about how good it was for a man to sweat and then to shiver.

  Stuart was humming a tune that sounded so familiar, yet so far removed. At last Will recognized it as a variation of a song from his own roving days—a song about some monstrous escapades of Paul Bunyan. It had the kind of words that helped a young man to get through the years of living in a womanless world. He had an impulse to start singing along with Stuart, but Rose was sitting there between them. He felt such a bond with the boy, knowing that the same words went through both their heads at the same time.

  “Are they going to bring Lucy to the station?” he asked Rose. He’d never seen a prairie child who didn’t love trains, but he thought Lucy must love them more than any child he’d ever known. She made him tell her, over and over, the stories of his own boxcar riding days. She even had dreams about trains.

  “I think so,” Rose said. “One of these days you ought to take her on the train to Jamestown. She wants to ride on one so much.”

  “I’ll do that! I wonder why I never thought of that! I’ll do that the first Saturday I can spare the time!” Will was elated. He’d hit upon a fine thing to look forward to.

  When they got to the station, Old Man Adams was still dozing over his telegraph keys. Stuart lifted the suitcase out of the back of the truck and set it on the long platform. The sight of the mail sack already hanging on its hook threw Rose into a near panic. “For heaven’s sake,” she cried. “Let’s get him waked up!”

  Millard Adams heard their voices and straightened up in his chair, looking fully awake at once. He had spent his life as a telegraph operator, and he knew how to listen in his sleep for the things that mattered—mostly the sound of keys. He had a white moustache that fanned out over his face and made him look like a Civil War general. He did always claim that he had been a drummer boy for the Union. Otherwise, the only outstanding event in his life had been the time when, as a loyal employee of the railroad, he had gone out on one of the posses that failed to catch that notorious train robber Jesse James.

  He had grown so small and thin now that his railroad watch seemed as big as an alarm clock when compared with his body. He wore a black suit and a white shirt.

  He stepped out into the tobacco gloom of the depot and smiled. “Why, by golly, I clean forgot!” he said. “The railroad has got pas
sengers today. I better get out my flag, hadn’t I? How are you? Good to see you, Stuart. You been getting some free rides from my company?”

  Stuart had to smile too. “I reckon,” he admitted.

  “How are you, Will?” Adams asked again.

  “Fine, just fine,” Will said, but in the shadow of the waiting room his face had the same luminous whiteness as Millard’s moustache. It was because he was so hungry, Rose told herself. She nudged him, when Millard went to get the flag. “I told you he’d forget!”

  “He’s getting on,” Will agreed. “I don’t hardly remember when he didn’t seem old to me.”

  “Let’s go back out now,” she said. She hadn’t noticed his paleness so much before, she decided, because he had just gradually bleached out from being inside the house nursing his leg.

  Will had finally caught Rose’s nervousness. The sight of the red flag did it. His heart quickened and climbed up under his collarbone. He looked around the town. From where he stood he could see the boards across the windows of Harry’s bank. A broken-down wagon hitched to the two most beautiful horses in the county stood in front of Ray Vance’s garage. Otto must be in there dickering for some old scraps to patch something with.

  A half-familiar man came out of Gebhardt’s Pool Hall, obviously already full of beer. He seemed to float from town to town along the railroad. Just about the time one had forgotten him completely, he reappeared. He was very small; that was why one remembered him at all.

  Mrs. Finley came out of Herman’s store carrying a sack of groceries that was so heavy she had to balance it against her hip as she would a two-year-old child. Her head leaned to the side opposite the grocery bag to compensate for it. She had the look of an apologetic beast of burden which felt the shame of its weakness. Will couldn’t stand to watch her.

  “Stuart,” he said, “there’s lots of time yet. You take the truck and go ask Mrs. Finley if you can give her a lift home. Go on, quick! And watch the brakes or you’ll smash the eggs!”

  Will watched the truck move to a stop behind Mrs. Finley. It slipped and squeaked at the last minute and made her give a little jump. She looked up when Stuart leaned out of the cab toward her. They talked for a moment; she was protesting, of course. The poorer she got, the prouder she acted. But Stuart got down, took the groceries, put them in on the seat, and handed her up as though she was his best girl.

  What a fine boy he really was. Whatever made a boy like him drink, anyway? He ought to be out squiring some pretty girls around once in a while—some girls as pretty as he was handsome. Will wondered if there were any pretty girls around. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that the only pretty girl he’d seen in a long time was Lucy. Girls were a little like young apple trees, he thought. They could stand only so many years of drought.

  “Here they come,” Rose said.

  Lucy was running to him, leaving the rest of the family behind. “Where is Mr. Adams’s flag?” she said.

  “Stuffed right in his hip pocket,” Will said. He squatted down to pull her between his knees and talk to her. It was remarkable how she was growing lately—how far above his head her face was.

  “How would you like to take a train ride with me?” he said. “And have Mr. Adams flag the train just for us?” She looked at her mother. “Can I please!”

  Rachel looked at George and George looked at Lucy. “I don’t think she ought to get a treat like that unless she does something to deserve it,” he said. “She doesn’t even know her table of eights yet.”

  “I’ll know them tomorrow! — Oh, it’s coming.”

  Old Man Adams came out and put his ear to the tracks, kneeling down carefully, balancing on his hands and knees and toes to keep his sharp old shins from pressing against the ties. He stood up, nodded at Will, and started down the tracks with the slow shuffle of a railroad man, never stepping between the ties, never trying to take two at a time.

  They could all hear the train now, and they knew how fast it would be coming, but Old Man Adams had fooled them. Like Aesop’s tortoise, he had managed to get far enough down the tracks so that he looked no bigger than a blackbird, with his speck of a bright red flag.

  The train flashed past the waving red speck. It was coming too fast; it would never be able to stop. The engineer’s slowly waving glove passed so high above them. They were down beside the great rods pushing back and forth, up and down. It was so eccentric and yet so regular—that blinding-fast up-and-down, back-and-forth of the rods circling the centers of the wheels. One could never keep track of the motion. Everything went by too quickly—the wheels, the lunging rods, the rolling drivers, the earsplitting steam, the waving glove.

  Yet each swaying car uttered lower, slower squeaks, each blurred line of windows became more nearly separate, and each whiteness behind them became more nearly a face. And all at once the faces were faces, and the brown man vaulted out with his little yellow step. Lucy often wondered why everybody else in the world was white except for those brown men with their yellow steps.

  Stuart got there just in time. He handed the suitcase to the brown man while the conductor yelled, “Board!” in the offended voice he used at flag stops.

  Her grandmother and grandfather climbed up the iron steps of the car. When they reappeared at a window they looked almost like all the other strange faces.

  Lucy lost track of which car had been theirs and when she looked back from the distant train, the platform and the rails below it seemed so alone and useless—as though there would never be another train. But there would, of course—to take her to Jamestown when she learned her 8’s.

  “Well, it’s kind of a hot day for a trip,” Mr. Adams said to her father. “Awful hot for this time of year, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is,” her father said. “Well … see you later. Let me know if there’s anything you need, Stuart.”

  “You bet,” said Stuart.

  They got in the car to go back to school. Lucy was in the back seat, but she could tell when her mother began to cry. The baby kept pulling at the handkerchief she held over her eyes.

  “Now, Rachel,” her father said, “you’re probably just borrowing trouble for yourself. You know what a tough old buzzard he is—as tough as he is stubborn. There ain’t another man his age in the county that would have come out of that fire alive. You ought to try to think reasonably about this.”

  Her mother never cried unless something was as bad as it could be. Lucy had tried not to notice all the other signs, but she knew for sure, now, that something bad was going to happen far away in Bismarck.

  Will settled back in his seat for the seventy-mile ride. “Mighty skinny bunch of cows out there,” he said, looking past Rose’s fine thin profile. “I wonder if they’re some of Egger’s.”

  “Probably. I don’t see how those poor things will get through the winter. They look half dead now.”

  “Nobody anywhere in the country can get a price for feed and yet the animals have to starve to death,” Will mused. There seemed nothing more to say after he’d said that.

  Presently Rose asked, “Do you really think this Murdoch is the best doctor we could get? Maybe you should be going to Fargo instead. Or back to Rochester.”

  “Oh, he knows as much as anybody knows, I think,” Will said. “Lawyers, doctors, politicians. They’re all good talkers. Who knows what they know?”

  He was so unlike himself, she thought. He was like an injured animal, snapping at people it had always trusted. It was because he was so hungry.

  After a while she said, “My, I’m surprised it can be so hot in here.”

  He looked out at the telegraph wires running in liquid lines against the sharp blue sky. “Liable to get cold tonight though. I hope Stuart remembers to put the mare in.”

  “And I hope he remembers to turn that lock on the chicken house all the way down. The weasels are worse, now that the birds are gone.”

  They passed through Driscoll, Sterling, McKenzie, Menoken, slowing just enough
at each station to snatch the mail sack from its post. Then they began to lose speed as they entered the outskirts of Bismarck. The train tracks crossed and multiplied into numerous sidings. They made a widening wasteland of cinders between the elevators and mills and cylindrical storage tanks. There was an air of prophetic antiquity about that cindered wasteland. The towering white columns could have been remnants of desert temples built by generations of slaves. Now the white pillars simply stood there, bursting with wheat—monuments left over from a system that had once had significance.

  This very morning’s Sun said that the domestic wheat stocks on hand came to over a hundred and fifty million bushels. That was not counting any of the grain already bought by millers, or any of the new crop en route to the mills. That was counting only the grain committed to storage—floating in ships and barges on the Great Lakes or sealed up in those tall white pillars.

  “ ‘Whited sepulchers,’ “ Will thought. He didn’t know exactly why the phrase had come to him, but he could not let the thought go. They were like tombs. Why? Perhaps it was their estrangement from the brown, billowing land. They were so white and vertical against it. They seemed more like urns filled with death than reservoirs filled with life.

  A year ago the lowest prices in history had been blamed on the wheat in storage—the wheat going begging. This year prices were a little better but there was still almost as much wheat in storage. He did not believe that the drought had cut away the surplus enough to have any lasting effect on prices. The drought had scared the speculators into raising their bids a little, that was all. Soon prices might very well drop again. Except for the farmer, almost everybody who made his money from bread profited by having those white cement cylinders always filled with wheat. It made a man wonder if this government could ever change things enough to move the wheat out of the sepulchers.