Winter Is Not Forever

by Janette Oke

  “Goin’ to bed already?” Uncle Charlie called after me. “Yeah,” I replied, not even turning around. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Sure you don’t wanta read a little of the paper here?” Grandpa asked.

  I was in no mood for reading Matilda’s paper, I can tell you that, but I didn’t say so to Grandpa. At least not in those words.

  “Think I’ll just go on to bed,” I said instead.

  But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there tossing and turning and listening for the sound of buggy wheels.

  They finally came. Then I could hear their whispering voices as they approached the house after putting Chester in the barn. They sounded like two young kids sneaking in the back door, but they weren’t kids and they weren’t sneaking in. Grandpa and Uncle Charlie were waiting right there at the kitchen table where I had left them.

  I could hear the rattling of cups as Mary made them their before-bed coffee and then there was general chatter and some soft laughter and finally footsteps on the stairs, and then the house was quiet for the night.

  I still couldn’t go to sleep. It seemed that life was out of control. All the old familiar ways seemed to be changing. Even our familiar routines seemed to be gone.

  Then I thought of Grandpa and Uncle Charlie and that last cup of coffee, and I realized that things weren’t really so different after all.

  CHAPTER 21

  Harvest

  I WASN’T IN A MUCH BETTER MOOD when I awoke the next morning. I hadn’t had much sleep, but mostly I had my mind set to be ornery.

  I got up early and went out to get a start on the chores. First, I went to check out Chester. I couldn’t find anything to get upset about so I went on down the lane to let the cows up for milking.

  It wasn’t long until Grandpa joined me at the barn.

  “Yer up early, Boy,” he greeted me. “You musta had a good sleep last night.”

  I didn’t make any comment.

  “How’s the cuttin’ comin’?” Grandpa went on.

  “Fine,” I answered truthfully.

  “Does it look as good as we hoped?”

  I had a hard time keeping the excitement out of my voice. The crop was a good one. It looked like it would beat any yield we’d ever had.

  I forgot my sour mood momentarily and concentrated on sharing the report of the field with Grandpa. His eyes took on a twinkle as I talked and his mustache twitched in satisfaction now and then.

  By the time I had finished raving over the crop, Bossie was bellowing to be milked. We parted ways; I went on to slop the pigs and Grandpa grabbed the milk pail.

  I had almost forgotten my dread of going in to breakfast and was thinking instead about the tractor I was dreaming of purchasing. I was walking toward the chicken coop with my head down when I unexpectedly bumped into something.

  Now I had walked that path many, many times over the past years, and I knew very well that there shouldn’t be anything in that spot one could bump into.

  My head came up and my hand reached out at the same moment. And there, standing with her back to me and looking around as startled as I had been, was a slip of a girl.

  “I—I’m sorry,” I mumbled, pulling my hand back from her shoulder where it had landed. “I wasn’t watching where—”

  What’s she doing standing there in the middle of the path, anyway?

  She was shaking her head back and forth, the startled look giving way to mirth. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been standing here in the way—I’ve been drinking in the sunrise.”

  Drinking in the sunrise? I had never heard it expressed like that before. My eyes shifted to the east and was astonished to realize the sunrise was worthy of such an expression. I stood staring at it—seeing it like it was the first time.

  “It is pretty, isn’t it?” I mumbled. “Could I help you?” I asked. “Are you looking for someone?”

  She looked puzzled at my question, then began to laugh. “You must be Josh,” she said, rather than answering my question.

  I nodded, but I didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

  “I’m Matilda,” she said simply, extending a small hand.

  My mouth must have hung open at that. I had expected an older woman, with hair swept severely back from her face and a dark blue, long-skirted dress with lace at the throat and sleeves. But I was facing a girl who looked no more than seventeen, with bouncing, light brown curls and sparkling eyes. She wore an attractive dress of green calico.

  “Matilda Hopkins,” she said again. “The new teacher.”

  I still couldn’t speak.

  Then Matilda changed the subject completely, her enthusiasm spilling over in a candid fashion. “I love your horse, Chester. He’s just bea-u-ti-ful.” She stretched the word out, emphasizing each of the syllables.

  “I’ve never seen such a beautiful horse,” she went on, “and Mary says that he is saddle broken too. I’d love to ride him sometime. I’d just love to!”

  She took a breath and finished more slowly, “If you wouldn’t mind, that is.”

  I found myself shrugging my shoulders and saying “of course not,” and Matilda was beaming her joy and thanking me profusely.

  “But I must get in. I’ll be late for school on my very first day if I keep dawdling.”

  And she was gone, tripping down the path in a most undignified way for a schoolteacher.

  I could only stare. And then I began to laugh. What had I been so upset about? Why had I been so scared? There was absolutely nothing to fear from this child. It wouldn’t be much different than having Sarah around.

  I chuckled all the way to the chicken coop.

  Friday night there was aYouth Group meeting at the church. Grandpa suggested, rather slyly, that I might want to break from the field work a bit early and take the girls. At first I was going to decline, and then I figured that it really wouldn’t hurt.

  I knew Uncle Nat felt that the farm work shouldn’t really come before my church commitments, so it might be wise for me to follow Grandpa’s suggestion.

  I should have taken the team, but I guess I just wanted to show Chester off a bit. The light buggy would be faster than the heavy wagon, but the light buggy also was very crowded for three people. It was really only made for two.

  Grandpa raised an eyebrow when he saw me hitching up. I knew what he was thinking.

  “Won’t be a problem,” I said before he could comment. “Both those girls are so small I could fit four like ’em on that seat.”

  Grandpa didn’t say anything.

  When I went in to do my last bit of slicking and polishing Uncle Charlie looked at me good-naturedly.

  “Figure you might take a bit of teasin’ showin’ up with two girls, Josh?” he asked me.

  His question caught me completely off guard.

  “Girls?” I said. “One of them is Mary and the other—well, she’s just a kid.”

  Uncle Charlie looked surprised at my assessment but he didn’t say anything.

  I was ready before the girls were, which was always a puzzle to me. I had put in a full day in the field, helped with chores, hooked up Chester, and still had to wait.

  Mary showed first. She really did look nice, and I remembered thinking again that Willie really had missed out—until I also remembered just who Willie had ended up with.

  What is taking young Matilda so long? I fidgeted mentally, and then she came down the stairs and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Her hair was gathered up away from her face and her dress was much more grown-up and I suddenly realized that she wasn’t a kid after all. I also realized that Uncle Charlie had been right. I might be in for some ribbing.

  But it was too late to unhitch Chester and hook up the team. The girls had already expressed their delight in the light buggy. I gathered up the reins and climbed aboard. I wasn’t sure how to arrange the seating. Mary took charge.

  “Why don’t you sit in the middle, Josh, and one of us will sit on each side,” she suggested.

 
; I don’t exactly know why I agreed, except I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down in the middle, a girl on each side of me. It was crowded, and I guess they feared they might get bounced right off the seat with Chester moving along like he always chose to do. Each grabbed an arm and hung on for dear life. I was hard put to handle the reins.

  I began to sweat. I didn’t know if I had the right to pray over such things or not, but I sure was tempted. I hoped there would be no fellas outside watching me arrive. But it was a warm fall night, and the fellas always stood outside and laughed and talked and watched everybody as they came.

  Oh, boy, I thought, have I gone and done it now!

  I wanted to put the blame on the girls. What did Mary go and fix herself up like that for, and why had Matilda chosen this night to look her age? How old was she, anyway? And why hadn’t she warned me?

  But I couldn’t blame them. Chester and the buggy had been my idea. I’d wanted to show off my horse—and look where it had gotten me!

  Mary and Matilda didn’t seem to have any problem with the arrangement at all. They laughed and chatted all of the way to town, with me right there in the middle.

  At one point a big jack rabbit sprang from the grass in the ditch, making Chester shy to his right. It wasn’t dangerous; Chester was a well-trained horse, and it only startled him.

  But it was enough to give the girls quite a scare. They grabbed hold of me with both hands. Matilda screamed. Mary was the first to recover; her face got a bit red and she released her firm grasp and mumbled some sort of apology.

  Not Matilda. I think she actually enjoyed the excitement and would have been glad to repeat it again. She wasn’t like any schoolteacher I’d ever had!

  When we got to the church, a whole yard full of fellas were standing there waiting. I could feel my face color and knew that I was really in for it.

  The girls didn’t seem to notice.

  “Josh!” one of the group called out. “Got your rig pretty full, don’t you?” But to make matters worse, I knew I had to get the three of us down from that buggy seat. I didn’t know quite how to be gentlemanly about my situation. I mean, how was I to hold Chester and assist two young women—one on each side of me—to descend in ladylike fashion?

  Uncle Nat arrived to save the day. He was just coming from the parsonage to the church, and he stopped and greeted us cheerily, then took Chester’s bridle and eased him in to the hitching rail. When I was able to release the reins, I excused myself and crossed in front of Mary so I could jump to the ground; then I was able to help the girls step down one at a time.

  While the boys were still shuffling and gaping, Mary was calmly introducing Matilda to Uncle Nat, a job that I should have been doing.

  The entire evening was pretty much what I expected. The fellas razzed me the total time. I sweated my way through the social, vowing to myself that I’d never be caught in the same predicament again.

  When we were about to go Aunt Lou called me aside. “I’m so glad you brought the girls, Josh,” she said. “I hope that you can do it again. Matilda seemed to fit in well with the group.”

  I nodded. She had, in fact, rather been the life of the party. “And, Josh,” went on Aunt Lou, lowering her voice to a whisper, “don’t pay any attention to the ‘pack.’ “ She nodded her head slightly in the direction of the boys, who had given me razzing for bringing two girls. “There’s not a one of them who wouldn’t give his right arm to be in your position tonight.”

  I looked dubiously back at my circle of friends and I began to grin. Aunt Lou was right. I walked over to the two young ladies who had shared my crowded buggy and extended an arm to each of them.

  From then on things began to change at our house. My lot wasn’t really so bad, after all. In fact, many would have envied my situation.

  Mary was probably one of the best cooks in the whole neighborhood. What’s more, she was gentle and caring and thought of many little ways to brighten the days for each one of us.

  And Matilda? Well, Matilda was Matilda. She was vivacious and witty and bright—a real chatterbox, about as different from Mary as a girl could be. Each added to our household in a special way.

  I wasn’t chafing anymore. There were still times when our big farm kitchen seemed a bit too small and I longed for a bit more space and a little more quiet, but generally speaking we all began to adjust to one another.

  And then we went full swing into harvest. All I could think about was getting that bumper crop from the field to the grain bins, and I blocked everything else momentarily from my mind.

  CHAPTER 22

  Fall

  HARVEST WENT FAIRLY WELL that year. We had the usual weather set-backs, but nothing that lasted more than a few days at a time. As the weather permitted, the grain was cut and stooked; then we had to wait on the warm sun to do the final drying of the stooks.

  It was my first year to drive a team on the neighborhood threshing crew. We traveled from farm to farm working the fields. A strict tally was kept of our days worked; we were allowed one day of labor, a man and his team, for every day that we put in. If I worked for eighteen days, I would be allowed three days of a six-man crew with no money changing hands. I figured that three good days would about finish our threshing, and that eighteen to twenty-four days would be the maximum of good weather needed to take care of all of the crops in our area.

  It was hard work, and long days for both the teams and the men. It was especially hard when the farm being threshed was several miles from home. Most of the farms were bunched in within a radius of a few miles, but one of them was seven miles away and another was six and a half. On those days I had to leave home early to get there in time to start the day with the rest of the men, and on the same days I got home well after dark.

  Some of the men took their bed rolls and bedded down in the stack of fresh straw, tying their teams to a nearby fence post. I didn’t want to stay, but rather than driving a tired team the additional miles each day, I decided to tie Chester on behind my rack first trip out. Then I left the team resting and feeding and rode Chester home each night and back again in the morning.

  It worked well. Chester could shorten my time on the road and also get a bit of a workout. He got too frisky when he wasn’t ridden frequently.

  The threshing crew represented an assortment of fellas—big and small, old and young, quiet and loud—all working together for a common goal. There were usually about six of us at a time, plus Mr. Wilkes, the man who operated the threshing machine. Some of the men worked for two or three days at a time and then sent out a replacement so they could get on home and get their own crops cut and ready for threshing. I was lucky enough to have all my fields cut before I left home.

  Mitch Turley and I were the youngest two on the crew. We had gone to school together back in our little one-room school— the very school where Matilda taught now. Mitch was Mary’s older brother, so he kept asking me strange questions about Mary. I soon caught on that he was really fishing for information about Matilda. It seemed that Mitch had seen her once or twice and been quite impressed.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to help Mitch get acquainted with Matilda. At one time he had attended Sunday school with Willie and me. At that point he never missed a Sunday, even though he hadn’t had much encouragement from home at the time. But now he never went, even though Mary tried her hardest to talk him into it. I didn’t offer him much information—or much hope.

  The oldest member of the crew was Mr. Smith. I think that Mr. Smith had been threshing most of forever with Mr. Wilkes. In fact, his team of bays was so familiar with all of the nearby fields that I think Mr. Smith could have stayed at home and the team could have made the proper rounds—except that they wouldn’t have been much good at forking bundles!

  Barkley Shaw and Joey Smith were both on the crew part time, too. Barkley and Joey were about the age of my Aunt Lou. I had never cared that much for Barkley—always considered him a show-off. But to his credit, he had settled down
a lot since he had married SueAnn Corbin and become the father of four little ones.

  All of the crew were neighbor folks I had known all of my growing up years. There wasn’t much said around the table about world events. Mostly it was who had lumbago, and who had the best seed grain, and who was seeing whose daughter. I learned a lot just listening to the conversation.

  During the time that I worked with the crew Grandpa did all of the choring. Uncle Charlie did whatever he could, and Mary did more than was expected. Even Matilda pitched in with feeding the chickens and carrying some wood.

  I didn’t see too much of the household during harvest. But when I got home late at night, they would all be waiting up. Matilda would sometimes be preparing her next day’s lessons while Mary mended or worked on some fancy things that Uncle Charlie and Grandpa teased her about, saying it was for her hope chest. Grandpa and Uncle Charlie would often be reading the latest edition of Matilda’s paper.

  They’d all ask politely about my day, and Mary would quietly prepare a snack and the evening coffee for Grandpa and Uncle Charlie while Matilda told us amusing stories about the happenings at school. As soon as we finished we’d all head for bed. Some nights I was so tired I could scarcely drag myself up the creaking steps. But then I would be off again in the morning before anyone else was even up.

  For eleven days we worked that way; then it was our turn for the threshing rig. I was so nervous and excited that I could hardly stand it. This was my first year to be completely in charge of the operation on our farm. I had to make all the decisions and handle all the arrangements.

  We had always hired at least two women to work in the kitchen preparing the food for the crew, but this year Mary informed me that she was sure she and Uncle Charlie would be quite able to care for things. I must have looked a bit doubtful. I remembered some of those farm homes where the food had been a little short and the unspoken disgust of the men around the table. I sure didn’t want them feeling that way about us.