The Waltons 1

by Robert Weverka

  “That so?” John said.

  Ep nodded. “Dave seems to think she might have come here to Walton’s Mountain. You haven’t seen nothin’ of her, have you?”

  John grinned. “Not since about eleven last night. She’s fine, Ep. Jenny’s here, sleepin’ upstairs with the girls right now.”

  “That a fact? Well, I’m relieved to hear that. She’s okay, huh?”

  “Seems to be. I guess she’s been around here since Thursday night. Spent one night at the old Pendleton place, then John-Boy here heard her playin’ the organ last night and me and him went over and brought her home.”

  Ep nodded. “Well, seems Dave’s got himself married again, and he kind of intimated Jenny didn’t take a shine to the idea.” He finished his coffee and rose. “I hate to run off, but I better get to a telephone and let Dave know where she is. Meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye on her.”

  “We’ll do our best, Sheriff. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, thanks for the coffee, Livvy.”

  After the door closed, John-Boy picked at his eggs, wondering what Jenny’s running away would mean. If she didn’t like her stepmother, would she have to go back and live with her anyway?

  “Too bad,” John said. “That happens sometimes, I expect.”

  Olivia shook her head. “And on top of all the other troubles Dave’s had.”

  “Will he come and get her?” John-Boy asked.

  “I reckon.” His father looked thoughtful for a minute, then looked past John-Boy and smiled. “Well, speak of the angel, look who’s up already. Mornin’, Jenny.”

  With her hair neatly brushed, and smiling cheerfully, Jenny looked as fresh as a spring flower this morning. “Good morning, everybody.”

  “How’d you sleep, young lady?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “How would you like your eggs, Jenny? Scrambled?”

  “Scrambled is fine, thank you. I’m not taking anybody’s place, am I?” She paused at the chair across from John-Boy, giving him a questioning smile.

  “Room for everybody.” John laughed. “At least for an hour or so.”

  For some crazy reason John-Boy felt tongue-tied, as if Jenny’s glowing presence rendered speech impossible. Her gentle smile as she sat down seemed to aggravate the problem even more.

  “I hope you’ll be goin’ to church with us this mornin’,” Olivia said. “It looks like it’s goin’ to be a beautiful day.”

  “Oh, I’d love to.”

  “I’m sure Mary Ellen must have an extra dress and hat if you don’t have one with you.”

  “No, I don’t. That would be wonderful. And Mrs. Walton, I . . . I think it’s awfully nice of you to take me in like this. And I want to help. I’d love to do the dishes for you after breakfast. And I can sweep and dust, or clean windows, or anything you’d like me to do.”

  “I could use another hand in the sawmill.” John smiled.

  “Oh, I’ll be glad to help if I can.”

  “Now, now,” Olivia said, delivering her eggs, “you won’t be workin’ in any sawmill around here. John is just havin’ fun. We’ll find somethin’ to keep you busy.”

  “Well, John-Boy,” his father sighed, “I guess we’ll just have to saw up those logs all by ourselves. We might as well get started.” He downed the last of his coffee, but hesitated as an anxious look came to Jenny’s face. “What’s the matter, Jenny?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “In fact, I guess it’s just the opposite.”

  Olivia frowned. “I don’t understand, Jenny.”

  “There’s nothing to understand, really. I mean it’s just that . . . well . . .” She took a deep breath and smiled hopefully. “Mr. and Mrs. Walton, is there any chance . . . I mean, do you ever take in boarders at your house?”

  The question startled all of them. John and Olivia exchanged a glance, and John-Boy’s heart leaped for a moment at the thought of Jenny boarding with them. But then he remembered the Sheriff’s visit.

  Olivia smiled. “Well, we don’t take in boarders on a regular basis.”

  “I was wondering,” Jenny said, “if maybe you would take me in for a while. I’d pay and I wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t be any trouble at all, Jenny. But you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. And we couldn’t take any money for it.”

  Jenny smiled, but then bit her lip. “There’s something I have to tell you, though. Dad doesn’t know I’m here.”

  John smiled, relieved by her confession. “I reckon he knows by now, Jenny. The Sheriff was here before you got up this mornin’. Your father called him last night.”

  The news didn’t seem to surprise Jenny. She nodded as if accepting her fate.

  “Jenny?” Olivia asked. “Why did you run away?”

  “I didn’t really run away,” she murmured. “Dad and Eula were off on their honeymoon, so I just decided I’d make a trip to Walton’s Mountain. I’ve wanted to come here ever since I found some letters of my mother’s. She loved it here.”

  John-Boy felt a lump in his chest, and had an urge to reach across and take her hand, or say something comforting. But Jenny quickly brightened, dropping the matter.

  “If I’m going to be one of the family, I’d better hurry up and get to work, hadn’t I.”

  “What you’d better do,” Olivia smiled, “is eat your breakfast before it all gets cold.”

  John studied Jenny for a minute, then pushed his chair back. “Come on, John-Boy. You and me are the ones who better get to work.”

  John Walton smiled to himself as he and John-Boy went out the back door. In all his life he could not remember John-Boy sitting through an entire breakfast without saying a single word. But he guessed there were some pretty strong palpitations inside the boy’s ribs. The first stirrings of love were powerful medicine. And he certainly couldn’t blame him. Dave Pendleton’s little girl had blossomed into a mighty handsome young lady.

  “Let’s get them logs off the truck first, John-Boy.”

  John-Boy nodded and headed for the truck, his thoughts apparently miles away.

  “John-Boy, I’d certainly admire to hear that nice voice of yours sometime before the day is over.”

  It took a minute for the statement to penetrate. Then John-Boy grinned. “Okay, Daddy.”

  IV

  John Walton sometimes wondered if he wasn’t crazy to keep on cutting wood for a living. The crazy part of it was that the living it produced was so close to nothing that it hardly seemed worth the effort. The commercial sawmill down in Charlottesville had bigger trucks for hauling logs, they had giant saws for cutting them, and power hoists to swing the logs into the saws and to load the finished lumber. The number of two-by-fours or finished boards John could produce in a twelve-hour day, they could turn out in ten minutes. So the price he got when he hauled them down to the retail lumberyard or sold them to his neighbors was determined by the prices being charged in Charlottesville.

  “That’s nice, seasoned lumber, John,” he was usually told, “but they’re chargin’ only eight cents a board in Charlottesville. Reckon I can give you nine to save me a trip down there.”

  From a seven-day workweek such prices brought only enough to buy the feed and gasoline and flour and sugar to keep them all alive and working from day to day. What little might be left over was used for thread and sewing materials to keep them warm. If there were ever two or three dollars left over after that, John felt like some kind of miracle had happened.

  At times it all seemed hopeless. As often as he had told himself that next year would be better, the next year turned out to be the same. If the winter was mild, he could cut far more firewood, but the need for it dwindled. In a cold winter like the one they just had, the struggle to cut and deliver it was too time-consuming and it was impossible to realize any profit. And there were so few people in a position to pay cash, most of the money he collected went into gasoline for the truck and the saw motor
. So the endless, slow-moving merry-go-round went on with each summer and winter promising nothing better than before.

  At other times John felt he was lucky. He had been to Charlottesville, and last year he had taken a trip to Richmond, and in both places he had seen men standing in line waiting for a bowl of soup, while others went from door to door, or stood hopelessly on street corners, or hopped freights, all hoping desperately that someone would give them a day’s work, or maybe a half day’s work, or that some other town might prove more promising than this one. Most of these men must have had families, and John couldn’t help wondering if their wives and children had anything at all to eat, or if they had clothing or beds to sleep on. Coming home from those trips John couldn’t help but count his blessings. But he often wondered what it was all coming to.

  At least the Walton family was surviving, and they were together. If the hogs or the cow didn’t get sick, and the bugs or the frost or the summer thundershowers didn’t wipe out the vegetable garden, and if he could earn enough money to buy the other necessities, they could carry on another year, and maybe another year after that, and maybe by then things might get better.

  The subject of economics was a pure mystery to John Walton. So many people needed food and houses and clothing, and there were so many people without jobs who knew how to build houses and grow food and make clothing, it didn’t make much sense that something couldn’t be done. Now there was even talk of having farmers plow under their crops and kill off their livestock. How such a thing would help feed hungry people was beyond him.

  The only politician he had ever seen in his life was a man named Colin Pierce, who was a congressman and gave a speech a few years back in Charlottesville. But from the look of the man’s hands, John doubted if he knew which end of a cow the milk came out of. All he talked about was how terrible Herbert Hoover had been, and how, if Colin Pierce was reelected, things would get a lot better. Herbert Hoover had been gone a good number of years now, and Colin Pierce had been reelected three times to the Congress. But things were pretty much the same, and John Walton no longer put much store in politicians.

  He was thinking about these things, maneuvering a heavy log into position in front of the whirling saw, when John-Boy made his startling announcement.

  “I’m gonna buy Mama a washin’ machine, Daddy.”

  John-Boy was guiding the far end of the log, bringing it around into a straight line with the saw, and from the casual tone of his voice he might have been commenting on the weather.

  “You’re goin’ to do what?” John asked.

  “A washin’ machine. Ike Godsey’s got a used one down at the store. He told me I could have it for only twenty dollars.”

  John stared incredulously at the boy for a minute, then turned his attention back to the log. “Okay, push her through.”

  John-Boy pushed and John guided while the blade screamed through the twelve-foot length. It was a good cut. They each picked up one of the halves and carried it back for a second cut.

  “Twenty dollars is a whole lot of money, John-Boy.”

  “I got a job, Daddy. I’ve already paid Ike a dollar.”

  “That where you were all day yesterday?”

  “Yes. And I gotta do some more work this afternoon.”

  They ran one of the split pieces through again, John guiding it more carefully this time, making a neat two-inch-thick plank. He couldn’t help but be pleased by the boy’s good intentions. But twenty dollars! That was a whole lot of money.

  “Where you workin’?”

  “Well, that’s somethin’ I wanted to talk to you about, Daddy. I’m workin’ for the Baldwin sisters.”

  “The Baldwin sisters!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  John-Boy was full of surprises today. “You helpin’ ’em make that Recipe?”

  “No, nothin’ like that. I’m just helpin’ ’em clean up around the place. Their cousin Homer Lee from Buckin’ham County is visitin’ and they’re plannin’ a big family reunion.”

  “I see. You told your mama about this?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  John grunted and reset the saw guides to trim the planks. As long as John-Boy wasn’t learning the fine art of whiskey manufacturing, he saw no harm in his working for the Baldwins. But there was no doubt Olivia wouldn’t look at it quite that way.

  “You want me to help with your mama?”

  “I’d sure appreciate it, Daddy.”

  John smiled. “Well, it’s for a good cause. I don’t see no reason to upset your mama by tellin’ her about it, do you? At least not if she don’t ask.” He glanced past John-Boy. “Mornin’, Grandpa.”

  Grandpa Walton looked like he had consumed a very satisfying breakfast as he surveyed their production. “This all you boys got done this mornin’? Guess you’d better let me take over, John-Boy.”

  Grandpa Walton worked harder on Sunday than on any other day of the week. His diligence on the day of rest provided a good excuse for him not to go to church. John-Boy smiled and stepped aside. “There’s another favor I’d like to ask you, Daddy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have to deliver some things to the Baldwins’ this afternoon. I wonder if I could use the truck.”

  “Well, I don’t know, son. You go streakin’ around in that truck without a drivin’ permit, Sheriff’s gonna pick you up for sure.”

  “It’s not far, Daddy.”

  “It’s not the distance, son, it’s—”

  “I’ll go with the boy, John,” Grandpa offered. “If anybody stops us, they’ll have to deal with me!”

  John regarded the old man with a half smile. “Grandpa, you want them ladies to have their supplies? Or you just interested in a sip of their Recipe?”

  Grandpa considered the question, then grinned. “Never told a lie in my life. So I’d have to say the answer to that is both.”

  “John-Boy, looks like you’ve got yourself the truck.”

  “Jenny’s goin’ to live with us,” Elizabeth announced when John-Boy returned to the house. “She’s goin’ to help us collect polliwogs, and she’s goin’ to earn six million dollars, too.”

  Everyone was up and almost finished with breakfast now, and Jenny was already working hard at the dishes.

  “We’re goin’ to share the six million dollars,” Jim-Bob corrected.

  “Isn’t that wonderful, John-Boy?” Mary Ellen asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  John-Boy glanced at Jenny, but she didn’t look up from the sink. As he went up the stairs he heard his mother cautioning everyone not to get dirty before they went to church. Her refusal to let them collect more tadpoles this morning brought a chorus of protests.

  In his room, John-Boy got out his pad again and gazed thoughtfully at the single word Jenny written at the top of the page.

  Jenny Pendleton was not going to live with them. As soon as her father came she would be taken to Richmond, or back to Florida, and John-Boy doubted if he would ever see her again. Then the passage of time would quickly erase the memory of her, and the entry of her name in his notebook would be nothing more than a curious footnote in his past. John-Boy turned the page and sat back, deliberately shifting his thoughts to the Baldwin sisters.

  He could understand his mother’s distaste for their Recipe-making activities. And John-Boy had heard stories around Walton’s Mountain that the two ladies occasionally accepted gifts from callers and returned such generosity with mason jars full of Recipe. But if it were ever suggested that these exchanges were commercial transactions, he imagined the two sisters would be horrified, A number of years ago during Prohibition, John-Boy had heard, the stream of callers bearing gifts for the Baldwin sisters was almost endless.

  John-Boy smiled as he made notes describing the musty elegance of the Baldwin house. If, instead of the Recipe, the two ladies were famous for their canned peaches or strawberry preserves, he suspected his mother would be their most sympathetic customer and greatest admirer. She w
ould be forever marveling on how those wonderful sisters were able to make ends meet and still conduct themselves with such dignity.

  He wrote:

  The Baldwin sisters were like the old clock in their parlor that no longer ticked. They had chosen their favorite time, they were happy in it, and had no desire to move on.

  “Boo!”

  John-Boy was so absorbed in writing he had heard no one enter his room. He lifted his head with a start, then quickly smiled.

  It was Jenny. She had come only halfway through the door and was regarding him with a questioning smile, a feather duster in her hand.

  “Don’t let me interrupt.”

  “You’re not interrupted Come on in.”

  “I’m dusting.” She moved to the dresser and brushed it lightly. “I’ve finished the dishes and fed Reckless, so now I’m helping your mother clean house.”

  John-Boy smiled. His mother always gave the house a thorough cleaning on Saturday, reserving Sunday for church and cooking meals. It was interesting that of all the rooms in the house Jenny apparently had chosen his to dust first.

  “What’s that on your head?” John-Boy asked. She was wearing what looked like a nineteenth-century bonnet.

  “Your grandmother gave it to me. She said in the olden days the women of the house used to wear them while they did the chores. How do I look?”

  “Not exactly like a pioneer lady.” To himself, John-Boy thought she looked beautiful. He felt a flush of embarrassment as she rose on her toes for a minute, revealing the backs of her knees. She had beautifully smooth legs, and she moved like a dancer.

  “Well, I feel like a pioneer lady. I feel like a pioneer mother struggling to raise a family in the wilderness.” She turned sharply. “Shouldn’t you be out milking the cow or chopping wood or something?”

  “I already chopped wood.”

  She frowned at the note pad on his desk. “What are you writing there, anyway?”

  “Oh . . . just stuff.”

  “Have you written anything in there about me?”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “What did you say?”