Hope in the Land

by Olivia Newport

  But hard work wouldn’t fix his car. He could sell it for spare parts. Surely it would be worth enough to buy his own bicycle and have enough left for train travel to Philadelphia.

  Minerva paused at the edge of town to stand in the shade of a brick building for a few minutes, refusing to arrive at the milliner’s counter perspiring and gasping for breath after walking five miles. The dry September had taken the edge off the blistering heat of August, but autumn still felt far off. Minerva adjusted the hat that shielded her face from sun-drenched skies, trailed her fingers across her hair in search of stray strands, and resumed her walk.

  She would say as little as possible to the milliner clerk. And she would look the young woman in the eye, giving no hint of the circumstances that had led to her change of mind.

  “The hat will not do for me after all,” Minerva said in the store. “I’ll take the refund in cash.”

  The clerk blanched and called for the milliner herself. Minerva had calculated that this might happen.

  “Is something wrong?” the milliner asked. “We are on schedule to have the hat ready at the agreed date.”

  “I won’t need it after all,” Minerva said. “I believe I paid a deposit of 50 percent, so if you would be so kind as to refund it.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to discuss another selection,” the milliner said.

  “Thank you, but no.” Minerva held firm.

  “Then perhaps a store credit that you may use in any department you choose. I would have to ask the floor manager for approval, but it might be a solution.”

  “I’m not shopping today,” Minerva said. “A refund of my cash deposit will be the easiest arrangement.” Ernie did not know about the special-order hat. As long as he remained in his sulk, hearing that she’d spent a store credit would only inflame him.

  “Mrs. Swain,” the milliner said, her tone shifting, “I’m sure you realize that a deposit on a hat created to your personal specification is a promise of your intention to complete the sale. We’ve already ordered supplies we do not normally keep in our small shop. We won’t be able to send them back. You understand.”

  The milliner was not going to refund the deposit.

  “Then make the hat and put it on display,” Minerva said. “Someone will want it.”

  “We have no guarantee of that.”

  “It’s a desirable design,” Minerva said. “You and I have created many attractive hats together over the years. You will have no difficulty finding another customer who will see the appeal.”

  “Women are not buying as many custom hats as they used to,” the milliner said. “The higher-end items are especially difficult to sell just now.”

  The clerk had moved on to another customer who wanted only to buy some feathers to freshen an old hat. Minerva watched the transaction. They weren’t even attractive feathers. People settled for so little.

  “I must insist,” Minerva said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Swain. I cannot help you. Perhaps you’ll change your mind again when you see the hat.”

  “I’m quite certain that will not be the case.” Minerva pivoted. “And I’m quite certain you will sell the hat for the price we agreed on, and at that time I shall expect the return of my deposit. Good day.”

  That hat was the most beautiful Minerva had ever ordered. The golden crepe fabric. The perky way the curved brim would turn up on one side. The band of turquoise under the silk flowers on the left side. Now she would never have it.

  “What in the world did you do?” Lena cradled Polly’s foot.

  “I was only trying to walk a few steps.” Polly winced as Lena rolled down a sock already blotting fresh blood from the wound on her foot. She would have been fine if someone had not left a metal milk crate in the kitchen where it didn’t belong or if she had not caught the outer edge of her shoe on its corner.

  “Mamm is not going to be happy.”

  Lena did not have to say the obvious. Mamm did not have to know. After two and a half weeks, she was no longer inspecting the wound every day.

  “I’ll clean it up,” Polly said. “It will be fine.”

  Lena held Polly’s heel in one hand. “It looks like it only opened on one end, but you’re going to have to wait for it to close all over again. Maybe the doctor should have a look to see if you need a fresh stitch or two.”

  Polly pulled her foot out of Lena’s hand. “I’m sure that’s not necessary.”

  “I’ll get a clean dressing and tape. Then I’m due at the Coblentz place.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Polly said. The outing would prove the new injury was no setback.

  “Not this time.” Lena opened a kitchen drawer and extracted the supplies required to tend Polly’s wound. “You might not be able to put your own shoe back on without causing irritation. Maybe you should go back to wearing my shoes.”

  Mamm was sure to notice that. Everyone would.

  “You’re making too much of this.” If Lena hadn’t happened into the kitchen when she did, Polly would have applied a new bandage, rinsed the blood out of her sock, and carried on.

  “I’ll get you a clean sock before I go,” Lena said.

  “What’s going on at the Coblentz place?”

  “Just something I said I’d help with.”

  Lena scaled the stairs with her light, barefoot step, returned from their bedroom with socks, and flitted out the back door. Polly put her head down on the table, wanting the blackness to whisk away the self-loathing that filled the moment. When she heard footsteps on the porch steps a couple of minutes later, she raised her head.

  “Did you forget something?”

  No one answered.

  “Who’s there?”

  No one answered.

  Polly picked up both crutches, resigned to the sensibility of using them both, and hobbled to the back door. With her face pressed against the screen, she took in the details.

  A half-filled crate of canned vegetables was missing.

  CHAPTER 31

  If only Minerva had lingered longer in town, this situation would have resolved itself. Instead, ten minutes after arriving home, before she had a chance to soothe her humiliation, she stared at the form on the clipboard. At least this time she had known the moment was coming. Her telephone call to intercept the order had been one day too late.

  “COD,” the delivery driver said, tilting his pen toward her. “Cash on delivery.”

  He must have thought she looked addled.

  “I know what the letters mean.” Minerva stifled her reflex to reach for the pen and scribble her name at the bottom of a white form with blue and pink carbons beneath it, as she had done dozens of times in the last few years. She did not know the driver’s name, but she knew his face.

  He wagged the pen at her. Three boxes were stacked at her feet on the porch.

  Minerva put her hands in the pockets of her skirt. “You’ll have to take everything back.”

  “I’m already scheduled to pick up at two other stops,” he said. “I need the space in the truck.”

  “That’s hardly my problem.”

  “Come on, Mrs. Swain. You haven’t even opened the boxes to find something to complain about.”

  “Is that what you’d like me to do?” Minerva reached for a box.

  He stopped her. “All I’m saying is you must have wanted this stuff or you wouldn’t have ordered it.”

  A spotless white tablecloth with gold-threaded trim and ten matching napkins for the dining room. Chintz curtains for the kitchen to make it feel less like a farmhouse. Two wool skirts, one charcoal gray and the other sage green, for the coming cooler weather. Dresses for Rose. Of course Minerva wanted the items.

  “A woman is allowed to change her mind,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Just never knew you to do it before.”

  “I’m doing it today.”

  He huffed and squatted to lift the stack of boxes. “Suit yourself.”

  Minerva stepped inside the house and clo
sed the front door, leaning against it while she listened to his retreating footsteps. Once he was off the porch, she moved to the window to watch. He raised the door at the back of the truck and tossed the boxes in. Minerva recoiled at his carelessness. He probably lived in someone’s back room with no appreciation for the rejuvenation the boxes held. The truck doors slammed, and the driver thundered the vehicle down the long driveway, the tires spitting out bits of gravel.

  She should have withdrawn to the bedroom until he was gone. Watching him go, with her linens and curtains and skirts smashed in the back, was too much to bear.

  At least Ernie wasn’t there to witness the exchange.

  Minerva pushed away disappointment, as if it belonged to someone for whom she had little regard, and recovered her resolve to complete today’s task. From the bottom drawer of the cabinet in the dining room, she took the list she had squirreled away of the items due for cancellation up to this point. With a blue fountain pen, she drew swift, dispassionate lines through the day’s returns.

  But not quite the final lines. Something outstanding. She just couldn’t recall what it was.

  Productivity and consumption were such big words to describe farm life. If Gloria had ever used either one in ordinary conversation, it was so long ago she couldn’t recall.

  “Mamm,” Polly said, “you’re not paying attention.”

  Gloria interlaced her fingers in her lap, under the kitchen table where Henry couldn’t see them. Sitting still in the middle of a Saturday afternoon was too unfamiliar.

  “I’m sorry,” Gloria said. “Where were we?”

  “Tomatoes,” Henry said. “Seventeen pounds for the week?”

  “I’m sure we’ve picked hundreds of pounds,” Gloria said.

  “Mamm,” Polly said, “he means how many we consumed. How many pounds have we eaten in the last week?”

  “We don’t weigh them before we cook,” Gloria said, “but seventeen pounds sounds reasonable.”

  “And onions?” Henry asked.

  “Five or six pounds, I suppose.”

  “Which?” Henry’s pen hovered above the paper.

  Gloria raised one hand to rub an eye. “Six.” Yost loved onions, so Gloria routinely sliced up more than she would have for her own tastes.

  “And the potatoes?” Henry said.

  Gloria wiggled her toes. Henry ate at the Grabill table at breakfast and supper, and often the noon meal as well. He should already know how many times they’d had fried potatoes at breakfast and boiled or mashed potatoes for another meal. It was the quantities he could not judge.

  “What would you say, Polly?” Gloria eyed Polly’s elevated foot. Polly hadn’t propped up her sore foot for a week. Why was she doing it now?

  “Twenty pounds,” Polly said.

  Gloria nodded at the certainty of her daughter’s answer. On any morning, Gloria could ask Polly what was available in the cellar and she would know.

  Beans. Peas. Cabbage. Carrots. Apples. Peaches. Milk. Cheese. Every morsel the family had eaten came under scrutiny. If they didn’t speed up this conversation, they would still be talking about last week’s food long after Gloria should be organizing next week’s meals.

  Henry shuffled some papers around. “Do you have records of how much you canned in the last twelve months?”

  “Records?” Gloria said. “Polly would know.”

  To Gloria’s relief, Henry turned his attention to Polly for the answers. Polly would deny that her foot was hurting, but Gloria had no doubt. Still, Polly came up with prompt responses that were more precise than Gloria could have supplied.

  “Seventy pounds of corn,” Polly said. “Forty quarts of sauerkraut, twenty-five quarts of pickles, fifteen quarts of jams. You don’t need to know which kinds, do you?”

  Henry consulted his forms. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Polly tilted her head toward the ceiling while she calculated and rattled off quarts of vegetables and fruit they had canned last year and were still eating. This year’s jars were in a separate section of the cellar, and Gloria was bracing for more canning days yet ahead to sustain the family in the coming winter.

  “I do have one question,” Polly said. “I can tell you what we grew and canned, what we ate and sold. I’m not sure what to do with what’s been stolen.”

  Gloria waved off the question. “A couple of pies are nothing.”

  “It’s more than a couple of pies,” Polly said. “Someone walked off with six quarts of canned vegetables just today.”

  “Treat it the same as what we’ve given away,” Gloria said. “Someone needed help as much as the people who eat at the Lutheran church’s food pantry.”

  “Consumption, I would think,” Henry said.

  At least in the Grabill kitchen, Polly’s remarkable memory was filling in the gaps. Henry had no reason to doubt the data Polly supplied so ably. Mrs. Lichty was going to have to start her week’s food diary all over again. She should have been nearly finished, but even Henry knew that her family could not have been sustained only on what she had thought to record, and his promptings to help her recall what she had omitted had yielded little encouragement. In the end, they taped the new form to a kitchen cabinet and beside it tacked up a string tied to a pencil. If the pencil lead broke, though, Henry doubted Mrs. Lichty would take the time to sharpen it or find another. As long as Polly was around, Henry wouldn’t have to worry about the integrity of the information garnered on the Grabill farm.

  “We’ve made strong progress today,” Henry said, tapping the top page of his stack.

  “What did your friend think about our menu?” Mrs. Grabill asked.

  Henry gulped. “Miss Kimball?” It was a silly question. Coralie was the only friend of Henry’s who had eaten at the Grabill table.

  Mrs. Grabill looked at Henry, eyes expectant.

  “Don’t pay any attention,” Polly said. “She’s just teasing you.”

  The air went out of Henry.

  Mrs. Grabill stood up. “It’s time for the two of you to get out of my kitchen.”

  “I’ll help you with supper,” Polly said.

  “Go sit in the yard,” her mother said. “Alice and Sylvia can help me. You stay off your foot.”

  Henry’s eyes went from mother to daughter as a telling glance passed between them.

  “Come on, Henry,” Polly said, taking her foot off the chair that supported it. “If you have more questions, I’ll answer them outside.”

  “Livestock production is another category,” he suggested.

  Polly used both crutches and kept her injured foot off the ground as he held open the back door for her. She’d hurt herself again, and her mother knew it.

  “There’s Rose,” Polly said.

  At the pump off the back porch, Rose’s lithe form worked the handle without hesitation, and water began to flow.

  “I just wanted to clean up a little bit before I walk home,” Rose said. “My mother would have a fit if she saw me like this.”

  Auburn tendrils escaped the kerchief that restrained Rose’s hair, and dark eyes caught the sunlight as she bent to splash water on her face. Henry knew how cold that water was, but Rose didn’t flinch.

  “It’s too warm to walk home,” Henry said. “You should take the bicycle.”

  “Then what would you use, silly?” Rose cupped her hand under the water and swatted it toward Henry. He blinked against the droplets that reached his eyes.

  Polly laughed, a song of gurgling pleasure.

  “I haven’t had a boy to splash since my brothers left.” Rose grinned.

  Polly giggled again, a sound Henry had not heard from her in the last few days. When he turned to absorb the smile that broke on her face, he failed to anticipate the fresh liquid onslaught Rose aimed in his direction. Well water as frigid as he remembered settled between his neck and collar. Henry didn’t mind.

  “Keep your eye on Rose,” Polly said. “She sneaks up on you.”

  Ernie’s steps coming up
the back porch stairs were heavier than usual. In the kitchen, where she was cutting vegetables for supper, Minerva tilted her head toward the odd sound. He dropped something and retreated rather than entering the house. When she heard a second identical thud, Minerva surrendered to curiosity and laid down the knife. As she pushed open the screen door, Ernie strode across the yard to the truck and pulled a bushel basket from the bed. Minerva stepped outside.

  “Ow!” Minerva’s stubbed toe throbbed instantly. How was it possible for a bushel basket to inflict so much pain?

  The third basket thudded to the porch floor.

  Three baskets. Ernie had brought home three bushels of fruit. Berries, peaches, and apples.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Minerva said. Even with six mouths to feed, he had no idea how long it would take to eat so much fruit. It would spoil long before then.

  “I’ve finally found it,” he said. “I may not have any cash, but I’m a decent mechanic and that’s worth something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I went out to Harding Orchards today,” Ernie said. “They had a bit of a machinery problem on their dock, and I was able to fix it.”

  “And that was worth three bushels of fruit?”

  “Nope. It’s worth eight.” Ernie descended the porch again.

  Minerva chased him. “Don’t be ridiculous. What are we going to do with eight bushels of fruit all at one time?”

  “You’re going to can it.” Ernie reached into the truck bed again. “Lucky for you, Harding says it should yield nearly a hundred quarts. That should be more than enough for the winter.”

  “I’ve never canned anything in my life.” Minerva swatted Ernie’s hands away from the fourth bushel.

  “Then it’s about time you learned.”

  “Is this some sort of punishment?” Minerva glared at her husband. “I spend a little bit too much money and now you’re going to force me to can fruit?”

  “You’ve always spent a little too much money,” Ernie said. He set the fourth bushel on the ground and reached for the fifth. “But this time we’ve had a scorcher of a summer that dried up a good portion of our yield, our line of credit is gone, and I’m not sure I can keep the tractor going more than an hour at a time without new parts. This is going to help. Lucky for you, come the middle of January, you’ll have fruit to put on the table. You’ll be glad for this.”