After while she turned her head and looked at the house. “Land, it’s gone to rack and ruin. I told David, we have to get some people in there, or tear it down. You tried the well?”
“Pump’s broke.”
She shook her head. “I’ll get Kenneth down here. If he can’t get it going, I’ll send water. He’s my other boy. You met David.”
“My husband did.”
“And the roof! And the windows! I didn’t know it’d gotten so bad. My stars.” She sighed. “Disgrace to humanity.” She brought her sandwich to her mouth and took another bite.
We both eat for a while. “Your husband ain’t well?” I said.
She frowned. “Stroke.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We’ve got ten, twelve men working for us now. Oil well.” She pointed her head to the north, and I heard her neck bones creak. “Worse comes to worst, they can sink you a new one—water well, I mean.”
She looked again at the house. “I grew up in that house. Disgrace to humanity.” I looked at the house, and when I looked back at her, I seen her lean forward with her weight on her knuckles and struggle to get up. I reached out to help her, but she frowned and pushed me away with one crippled hand. She scooted over the rough rocks and somehow got herself to stand up, and you could hear her hipbones as she rose. The sound of it—raw bones rubbing together—run a chill up my spine. I’d seen crippled people before, but nothing this bad. I pictured her up in the big house, with her husband sick and her boys growed up.
She stood there for a moment leaning on her cane, gasping. I rose and put my arm on her elbow, but she shook it off.
“You need anything,” she said, and she started off limping through the weeds, heading up the slope to the big house.
“Thank you for the sandwich,” I said, but she never turned around nor said nothing else.
I opened the jar and drunk down half of it, watching her. It was going to take her a long time to get to the big house, a long, painful trudge. I wondered, how come she didn’t have one of the men bring her down here in a buggy? How come was she putting herself through that? Then I remembered I meant to ask her what the limestone wall was for, but I never had the chance.
Wasn’t a couple hours later, her son Kenneth come down with two cream cans full of water in the back of his truck. He had the look of a schoolteacher, with spectacles and his hair greased and combed back, but he was wearing boots and overhauls like regular men done. He looked about thirty, younger than I expected from his mother’s age. Maybe she was younger than she looked.
Kenneth took one look down the well—it was in the lean-to on the back—and told me it was half-full of dead animals and they’d start digging a new one in the morning. Meanwhile, he’d bring water twice a day, and would I mind putting the empty cans out back.
Then he took out a notebook and pencil and walked over to the porch, and I followed him. He looked at the place where the porch had split off the house and wrote in the notebook. He never said nothing, so I asked him, “You and your brother, you take care of the folks’ place?”
“David’s in charge of the oil business, which I guess is what we’re in now. Don’t farm much anymore.” He took out a pocketknife and poked the sill of the house. “Me, I do what he tells me to, always have.” He laughed and moved along the foundation, where he poked the sill again. “No dry rot, that’s good.”
He circled the house, writing things down, and then he walked over to his truck.
“You know what that wall’s for?” I pointed to it. “Don’t seem to go noplace.”
He blinked like he’d forgot I was there. “That wall?”
I nodded. What other wall did he think?
“Huh.” He squinted at it. “When we were boys, she made us carry stones down here and build on it whenever we got in trouble.” He laughed. “Who-eee. Spent many an hour tromping up and down that hill, hauling rocks.” He climbed into his truck, nodded to me, and drove off.
* * *
One day in late August I got two letters in the same mail. I read the one from Dora first. It was easy to picture her when you read her letters, they sounded just like her. Wasn’t much news in this one, just that Dacia was growing fast, Opal was about the same, they was all well, hadn’t rained in two months, the twins was thriving, the neighbor had a new automobile, Dacia claimed she seen an aeroplane one day hanging the wash out, it was a sight, Buck’s barbershop was real busy, how was the house coming along, did we have water yet, and so forth. Write soon, we miss you both, we love to get your letters.
The other letter was from Alta Bea. She’d made her mind up, her and Harold was getting married in a couple weeks and settle near Oil Hill, had I heard of it? Was it decent? And they’d bring Dacia and Opal on the train with them, if we was ready for them.
She said she was sorry for how sick she was the last time we seen each other that day at the boardinghouse. “Sick” was what she wrote, and her hung over. She was feeling better, now that things was settled and she was going to be married. She reminded me she’d loaned me and Sam the money to elope—I knowed Sam had never missed a payment, she just wanted to remind me I owed her—and she said, “Do you remember that day at Turner Falls, when we went skinny dipping?” Which of course wasn’t true at all. We’d only waded in up to our ankles, and we’d kept all our clothes on.
She closed by saying she missed me something fierce and couldn’t hardly wait to see me again and to let her know about Dacia and Opal.
I read Alta Bea’s letter with trepidation. Her getting married and coming to Kansas, that was one thing when we was back in Missouri, but now it felt different. It felt like me and Sam was tangled up in something I never seen coming. I thought about how Alta Bea was turning into a drinker, and how she was marrying a man she wasn’t sure about and a sneaky one at that, and how after they got here we’d be the only people she knowed, and with us being beholden to her—it all give me a queasy feeling in my stomach. But I also remembered how Alta Bea and them, they’d been awful good to me and the children when we needed it.
When Sam got home, I met him in the lean-to—only strangers used the front door—and told him the news. “Is that right,” he said. “Well, good for him. About time.” He dipped his hands in the washbowl and rubbed them over his face.
“I reckon we’re ready,” I said. While the men was hammering on the house, I’d scrubbed and whitewashed the walls and floors till they was practically raw. Ever little bit I’d feel a pang of lonesomeness, but it never lingered because there was too much to do.
“Maybe we can get a band going, banjo player. Just need a second fiddle, maybe a piano. I reckon they dance around here, don’t you?”
Sam, he was always thinking way above me. Now he looked at me and said, “Everthing’s working out, ain’t it?”
“It’ll be good, having Alta Bea and Harold with the girls on the train,” I said. “I was worried about sending for them, all alone.”
He took me in his arms. “You’re the one always says, worry’s interest paid on trouble you ain’t had yet.”
“Let go, your arms is wet.”
Well, he wouldn’t let go. He said that old lean-to reminded him of when we used to meet in the cabin on the Snedeker property when we was courting, and how much he wanted then to take my virtue, and why didn’t we spend a little time in our bedroom we had all to ourselves while we still could. He always was a smooth talker, Sam was.
* * *
That night I wrote Alta Bea back and wished the two of them well. I teased her about changing her name from Snedeker to Satterfield. I wrote to her how Memaw used to say, “Change the name and not the letter, change for worse instead of better. Ha ha.” I caught her up on the house—besides the new well and the roof, the windows was done and the bushes was cut back, and the second bedroom was ready for the girls, though she and Harold was welcome to sleep in there till they found a place. And I told her we couldn’t hardly wait to see everbody.
&nbs
p; Chapter 16
The day Alta Bea and them come was a hot one, and there wasn’t no shade to stand in by the tracks, and the train made an awful racket slowing to a stop. Soon’s I seen Opal wave from the window, I started up bawling. Till that moment I hadn’t let myself miss them two, especially Opal, and now it hit me. Them, the twins, Mama, my brothers, even the kin back in Kentucky, even Daddy. I missed them all. Then I reminded myself I was lucky to have my sisters, and I swallowed back my tears.
The first one down the steps was Dacia, and I was surprised—it looked like she’d growed half a foot since we’d saw her last, though it had only been a couple months. She was just eleven, and here she was getting bosoms and hips, and her face sharpening up.
She said to me, “Well, I hope you’re happy, making us come all this way.” The words of a girl, but her manner and voice seemed like a woman, or soon-to-be one.
Alta Bea was close behind. “Dacia!”
“I’m so glad you come,” I said to Alta Bea. “You too, Dacia.” I tried to touch her on the cheek, but she pulled her face away with a frown.
“Harold,” I said, nodding to him.
“Bertie.” He looked around. “Where’s Sam?”
“Hauling to Wichita. Back tomorrow, most likely.”
He looked disappointed. To Alta Bea he said, “I’ll see that the bags get to the hotel.”
“Ain’t you staying with us?” I said, but secretly I was relieved they wasn’t.
Alta Bea just shrugged and pointed her head toward Harold, like it was his idea.
Now Opal come down the steps, and I grabbed her up. “How was your trip?”
“Got a lot of mending done,” she said, serious.
“The poor thing,” Alta Bea said. “She couldn’t keep anything down, the whole way.”
I looked at Opal, alarmed. “You all right?”
She smiled. “Just hungry a little bit, is all.”
“Is it always this hot?” Alta Bea said. “Let’s go inside.” She started for the little depot.
“I hate this place!” As soon as this was out of her mouth, Dacia took off running. I seen her duck behind a tree.
“I’ll get her,” Alta Bea said.
“Let her go,” I said. “Ain’t no place she can go.” But Alta Bea was already after her.
I took Opal’s hand. “Nice clean sheets tonight, won’t that be nice?”
Harold come back, slipping his wallet into his jacket pocket. “Where’d they get to?”
“I expect they’ll be along,” I said, and then there they was.
I’d borrowed the Whitesides’ wagon, and now I climbed up on the spring seat and took the reins. Alta Bea set beside me.
“We’re off, like a dirty shirt,” I said. One of Mama’s sayings.
As we rode along, Alta Bea remarked how pretty the Flint Hills was.
“Mrs. Whiteside, our landlady?” I said. “Her son David, he has a book says there’s rocks under the ground that go back to before there was people. You think that’s true?”
She wiped off her neck with her hankie. “Rocks and oil both.”
“Just imagine what-all them rocks has saw.”
Alta Bea nodded. “It’s a wonder.” She got out a cigarette and lit it.
“Ugliest rocks I ever seen,” Dacia said.
* * *
The minute we pulled up to the house, Dacia said, “If you think I’m living in that shack, you got another think coming.”
“It ain’t so bad,” I said. “You’ll get used to it, I expect.”
“Bigger than the home place,” Opal said.
Everbody jumped down off the wagon, and we each stopped and dipped us a drink out of the graniteware pot on the front porch. Then the girls, they lit out to have a look around. I told them to watch out for snakes if they was going up to the barn.
I had the chicken and noodles already cooked—my best company meal—and I’d set the table with what was left of Mama’s white plates and cups, along with the silverware with the shell design. I also had out her big serving bowl with the hand-painted pink roses. Before we left I’d give Dora the matching platter, and though it was chipped she’d gotten misty-eyed.
“Let’s go ahead and eat,” I said to Alta Bea and Harold. “No telling when the girls’ll get back.”
“Pretty table,” Alta Bea said. She got out her flask and poured some whiskey in her and Harold’s teacups.
All Harold wanted to talk about was the oil business. “The Whitesides, they’ve got themself a well,” I told him. “Got a wildcatter already spudded it.”
His eyes lit up. “It prove out?”
“He has this oil book,” Alta Bea said. “All he did on the train was read, read, read.”
“Big pool north of the ridge, evidently,” I said.
“Oil, oil, oil,” Alta Bea said.
“And a Mr. Fox, he already put up a couple dozen wells near where the Whitesides’ is, and there’s a big outfit from back east has put some in.”
“Let’s go see it, want to?” Harold said.
“Please,” Alta Bea said, rolling her eyes. She gestured with her forkful of noodles.
The girls come back after while. Opal, after she eat, begged off going to the oil field, saying she needed a nap. Dacia said she would go, she needed fresh air. The house stunk, in her opinion.
It wasn’t but half a mile to the Whitesides’ north pasture. Walking through alfalfa gets tangly, but it does give off a sweet, grassy smell. Harold and Dacia, they run ahead up and over the ridge, and me and Alta Bea lagged behind. I asked her how her and Harold got along with the girls during the long trip from Obsidian.
“Dacia’s a headstrong girl,” she said.
“She’ll be fine once she gets used to the place, I reckon.”
“Getting used to isn’t in her way of thinking.”
“She’s mouthy, don’t I know it, but she’s a good girl in her heart,” I said. “She don’t scare me none.” I was saying what I hoped was true. But soon as I’d seen Dacia at the depot, and how grown-up she was getting, my old dread had came back to me. Didn’t seem like I had no way of keeping her under control—and what might she take it into her head to do, once she realized that? She’d been on a bad road for as far back as I could remember. And now even Alta Bea seen it.
“William told me she talked about running away,” Alta Bea said. “More than once.”
“Dora wrote me. I said, where-at’s she going to go? Said, she’s got no place to go, and that’s where she’s going—no place.” Whistling past the graveyard, is what we used to call it when you was pretending you wasn’t scared.
Alta Bea stopped. “Times are changing, Bertie. Girls just take off by themselves, heading west to California and Oregon. They think they’ll be in the pictures or strike gold.”
This shook me, though I shrugged. “Likes to hear herself talk, is all.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Terrible things happen to them. Read the newspapers.”
I pulled away and looked to the top of the ridge, where Dacia and Harold had disappeared. “I tell you what, she sure has growed since I last seen her. Don’t seem like it’s been long enough for her to have growed so much.”
“Maybe it’s been a long time since you took a good look at her,” Alta Bea said. “Maybe you aren’t seeing what’s there in front of you.”
“I see good enough.” I heard the sand in my voice.
Neither one of us said nothing for a little bit. The air felt thick.
Finally, Alta Bea said, “Come on, let’s go look at that oil well. Harold’s liable to buy it before we get there.”
* * *
The Fox-Whiteside field was little compared to the El Dorado field, which we was told covered more than thirty square mile. But for all that, Whiteside was plenty big. When me and Alta Bea made it to the top of the ridge, we stopped and looked. Besides the derricks, there was machines and outbuildings of all kinds, wagons, trucks, stacks of pipe and parts, men running around ca
rrying things, hammering, climbing up and down, talking and hollering. And everwhere clouds of soot, smoke, and steam.
“Men,” she said. “Seems like they can build anything as long as it’s big and noisy.”
“These is modern times, sure enough,” I said.
Alta Bea blinked and nodded.
I seen Harold and Dacia down there standing by the Whiteside derrick, and me and Alta Bea walked down the slope.
“What is that smell?” she said.
“Dead things from deep in the ground don’t smell good.”
When we got there, Harold was standing just inside a little shack next to the derrick. There was a man with him, black-faced with dirt. He started up a piece of the machinery, which made a terrific racket. I couldn’t hardly bear it.
Dust rose in billows all around us.
Harold pointed to a big wooden part of the derrick that looked like a ladder. “Walking beam!” he hollered. “Pull the cable up, boom! Drop the bit! Boom! Big hole!”
“I can’t abide the noise!” I hollered.
Harold nodded to the man, and the three of us headed back to the alfalfa pasture. Only when we got there did I notice I’d been holding tight on to my belly.
I looked around. “You seen Dacia?”
Alta Bea and Harold looked at each other.
I said, “She’ll be along directly, I expect.”
Dacia showed up at the house about an hour after we got home. When I asked her where she went, she said nowheres.
* * *
That evening Harold went into town to the hotel, but Alta Bea wanted to stay up and talk, so I asked her to spend the night at our house. After the girls was in bed, me and Alta Bea set out on the porch. The evening was cooling down, not a lot but a little.
“I hate the thought of Harold coming home and dripping oily dirt all over my house,” was the first thing she said after she took a big drag off of her cigarette. She wasn’t smoking just for the look of it, like some women done. She sucked it hard into her lungs.
“He ain’t getting a boss’s job?” I said. “Suit and collar?”
She rolled her eyes. “He wants to learn the business from the ground up, he says, so he’s starting by working in the field.” She shuddered. “I can just picture his clothes, stiff with oil.”
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