by Ann Treacy
They shared bits about themselves, but both also held back certain information. Sam shared that his parents had died of influenza—he remembered them only vaguely—but despite Martin’s questions, Sam wouldn’t talk about Ruby other than to say she was his cousin.
Martin did not tell Sam that he was reading his aunt’s childhood diary, but day by day he shared more about his brother. He tried to explain how Dan was, about how people liked him the best, even Lilly. How Martin always had to be the serious one, the one to remember instructions, to stick to the job at hand because Dan was always testing and doing daring things.
Sam said nothing, but Martin could feel that he was listening. They had stopped for lunch and in no time an hour had gone by.
“Dan bragged; he always bragged.”
Sam looked puzzled, so Martin swaggered his shoulders and explained, “Brag means saying you can do anything. Dan was wild-eyed; he bragged he could go right under that horse’s belly on his damn sled. I couldn’t stop him. . . . That’s how he died.” Martin put a gloved hand to his throat. “Do you know that word? Decapitated?”
“Not till now.” Sam leaned on the plow, pulling long grass between his fingers and listening.
“My mother doesn’t know that. Not everything. Pa told her Dan looked so peaceful—like he was sleeping—that she should remember him that way and not come to the undertaker’s. Everyone let her think he just hit a tree or a rock or something. My parents spent everything they had on his funeral. Everything. That funeral was a scam.”
Sam pointed across the rocky field. “Look. There. A man is coming.” He slipped from behind the plow into the woods behind the rock pile. Martin cleaned up their lunches and started Finn back into the field. It was Meehan.
Martin could see him clearly now. Meehan picked his way, head bent, across the rutty ground. He had no hat, and mopped his brow with a handkerchief, then stopped and lifted each foot to wipe dirt from his shoes. Martin steered Finn away from the Lunch Rock and farther up the windbreak.
“Ain’t you something there, boy? Out here working by yourself. What’s that you’re doing?”
Martin remembered what Sam had said. He didn’t like that Meehan had been talking about their farm in town. Feeling cautious, he decided not to give much information. “Plowing.”
“Why, look there.” Meehan pointed ahead to a low fence that boxed in a square of earth near the edge of the woods.
It was the Gunnarsson family gravesite.
Meehan waved at the spot. “You don’t see these places much anymore, now there’s a proper cemetery in town.”
Martin fought to keep his tone respectful. “What brings you out here, Mr. Meehan?”
Meehan held up his hands to imply nothing, nothing at all. “I was just going past and thought I’d look the place over good.”
“For what?”
“Well, it’s a fact that your pa hasn’t sent money since that accident of his. Taxes will come due. I’m just seeing what all this farm consists of in case you folks decide to sell. It’s for your family’s own good.”
Why did Ma tolerate this man coming around? Since Dan’s death she was so passive. Martin remembered the Ma who once would have dismissed the likes of Meehan. Was he old enough to stand up to Meehan? How old was old enough?
“No thanks.” Martin started Finn walking. “Mr. Perry told me how you tried to buy him out, too. Was that for his own good?”
“Boy, there’s no fool like an old fool, and Perry’s an old fool. He should move to town if he can’t handle farmwork.”
Martin didn’t feel like a boy. He was only fourteen, but fourteen and in charge of a farm, an elderly great-aunt, sick mother, and little sister. He decided right there that fourteen was old enough to speak back. He wouldn’t tell Meehan off, but he could surely dismiss the man.
“I’m burning daylight. Good-bye.” Martin grappled with the plow handles.
Meehan, choosing each step carefully, couldn’t keep up when Finn stepped out smartly.
He called after Martin, “Foreclosure is an awful business that takes a long time. You think about it. My way would get you folks some money at least.”
“Whoa.” Martin turned. “For today, and whether I like it or not, my family owns this place. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Meehan, you’re trespassing.”
“You won’t dare be so high-and-mighty disrespectful when I come here with foreclosure papers.”
“No. Don’t. Don’t you bring the papers. When it’s time for those papers, send someone else.”
By the time Martin returned to where Sam hid in the woods, he felt an odd sense of power, almost relief.
“What did he want?” Sam inquired.
“Meehan? Up to his usual no good.”
“What did you tell him?”
Martin grinned, “I told him ‘jal avree!’” Go away. “That magic of yours works good, Sam.”
Chapter 17
Bit by bit darkness fell later each night. Sunlight seeped into the earth and the ground softened. “It’s time to plant corn when you can sit on the ground and it doesn’t feel cold,” Mr. Perry said. Martin had found him disassembling a harvester in the sunlight of his open barn doors. The man appeared red-nosed and miserable, his irritated eyes still so bloodshot they looked orange. “This here I used to harvest oats and small grain. That’s the other thing, Martin.” He stood to blow his nose. “You need to plant a field in oats and alfalfa. The oats are ready to cut and thrash by July; then the hay comes up for fall. You boys will do right well to get crops of corn, oats, and alfalfa.”
The large man stepped out the barn door and spat generously onto a pile of soiled straw. “You’ll be able to feed quite a few animals through next winter or sell the feed for cash. Whichever you decide. You’re learning fast. Maybe next year you and your pa can manage my place, too. Someone’s gotta work my land eventually.”
According to Mr. Perry the disc harrow came next. Again Sam and Martin retraced their steps across the fields they had cleared and plowed; this time the horses pulled a contraption of sharp metal circles that broke up large clumps of earth.
Finally they had cleared and plowed, harrowed and cross harrowed. Planting, when the time came at last, felt like not a chore but a reward. They created straight rows of corn planted exactly thirty-six inches apart and forming a series of squares across the field. The nearly perfect spacing between stalks and between rows would allow the cultivator to move between the young plants without damaging them.
With the plowing and planting done for the season, the boys no longer needed to see each other regularly. But Sam came often to the homestead through the pasture, carefully entering the barn from below. They continued the language lessons they’d shared during breaks on Lunch Rock. Sam was stymied by idioms, collected any he heard in town, and brought them to Martin to explain.
“To boot? A man at the stables asked me to throw in a bridle to boot. And what about smell a rat when there are no rats? I often hear this barking up the wrong tree.”
But his English was very good now. Martin only occasionally had to explain that receptable or progressful weren’t words, or that instead of “in momentarily” Sam should say either “in a moment” or “momentarily.”
One morning Martin found Sam feeding Finn and Marshall. The dark, once pudgy boy had changed dramatically from the heavy fieldwork. Muscle tone had replaced the soft flesh on his belly, and his forearms were hardened from steadying the plow.
Martin felt, for the first time in weeks, the odd sense of having time on his hands. “I started to worry Mr. Perry would never stop thinking up new reasons for us to walk over those fields.” Martin patted the plow. “Today I’ll plow the garden, then grease this and store it away.”
Samson grinned at him. “You’re starting to look dark, like me.” He nodded at Martin’s red, burned face and shoulders.
“Summer’s here; that sun was almost hot yesterday.”
When Samson smiled his teeth shone bright i
n his dark face. “I have the perfect way to celebrate the end of planting.” He rubbed Finn’s muzzle before feeding him. “Come to a wedding tonight.”
“A wedding? Where?”
“At the meadow where we’re camped. I came to invite you.” Samson could barely contain his excitement. He ran his hands over the large animal’s flank.
Not wanting to disappoint him, Martin said, “Well, now, I don’t know.”
“We’ll be dancing and there’ll be lots of music and food. Always is; could last till morning. Come late, after your people go to bed.”
“I’ll see,” Martin managed. As he picked up the shovel to clean Marshall’s stall, he thought back to his last visit to the Gypsy camp. His only visit. He remembered Ruby, who hadn’t liked him much. He remembered liking her green eyes though. “I’ll give it a try,” he said as he flung the manure out of the barn.
Aunt Ida rummaged on the shelf to find her favorite glass for flattening cookies, a large flat-bottomed glass, not the small jelly glass she slipped into socks for darning. Martin watched her roll the dough between her palms, then place the balls on a baking tin. She dipped the glass in a saucer of sugar and flattened each cookie before baking.
“May I have the leftover sugar for a tea party?” Lilly asked when the cookies were in the oven.
This was the longest Martin had lingered in the kitchen in a month. It surprised him to see how little the women’s lives had changed with the turn of the seasons. He had been so busy learning how to farm and accomplishing all the early spring chores that he hadn’t noticed their routines were much the same. There was more contact with people, peddlers and such, now that the roads were open. And food from town was more plentiful with the horses and wagon for transportation, but otherwise they were still inside, cooking or ironing, like they had been in winter. He was glad he had time today to get the garden ready for them.
Ma came in from gathering eggs. Aunt Ida held out a hand for the basket. She’d already lit a candle and would hold each egg in front of the flame so she could see through the shell. “I need to candle those for custard. My recipe calls for double-yolk eggs.”
Martha hung firmly onto the handle. Her voice carried today; it sounded lower and more controlled than usual. “I don’t understand why you won’t just separate some eggs and use extra yolks.”
There was something different about Ma’s voice. Martin glanced at Lilly, who was already looking at him. There was a touch of the old Ma in Ma’s voice, the Ma who sometimes lost her temper because Aunt Ida was so set in her ways.
Aunt Ida let her stand there clutching the basket. She moved to the cookstove and turned a tray of cookies in the hot oven. She nodded in confirmation and said, “My recipe is certain—double-yolk eggs.” The old woman smoothed the flour-sack apron over her tiny waist and continued in a voice that ignored the difference of opinion they had just shared. “Now, Martha, I looked at your garden plan.”
She walked to the sideboard and straightened a sheet of drawing paper with her forearm. “This here won’t do. You planned the sunflowers so they shade the carrots and beets.” Aunt Ida began to sketch in changes with a pencil, boldly scratching changes to Ma’s plan, almost daring Ma to object. “We’ll do pole beans and cucumbers along here. And that’s already hollyhocks and iris. No point in wasting God’s time trying to move them.” She pulled at one long sagging earlobe. “Martin, can you get some wire fence? We’ll set it along here for peas to climb.”
“I won’t be going to town until it rains,” he said automatically, before realizing he had the time to go now whenever he wanted.
“If you finish plowing the garden today, we’ll plant tomorrow,” Aunt Ida told him. “The wire can go in later.”
Maneuvering in the garden space was much tighter than a field, but Martin was now proficient with the plow. The weather of the last two weeks had been warm but overcast and now gave way to searing sun and a hot afternoon. Lilly brought him lemonade and stayed to watch the turning over of the earth, her doll tucked under her arm.
While Martin harrowed the garden plot, Aunt Ida dug around the edges with her spade. She complained about the work, but Martin bet she looked forward to having a garden like she had as a girl. Ma hung sheets on the line—perfectly, carefully, loudly snapping tea towels and pillow linens.
Martin turned Finn in the confined space and saw Lilly’s feet running under the full clotheslines. Washings were one thing Ma was still particular about. Martin remembered how, as children, he and Dan would run under the sheets as Lilly was now doing. They played hide-and-seek and let the sheets drape over them as they ran until Ma would shoo them away. Ma had hated it; she always shooed them away.
Lilly pulled too hard, and one sheet came off in her hand. Martin stepped out from behind the horse and would have called to her, but now Aunt Ida was watching, too, from the other end of the garden plot. They looked at each other, then watched as Lilly kept running and pulling at the wash behind Ma’s back.
“Stop that!” Ma shouted when she turned and saw the sheet lying in the dirt. Martin and Aunt Ida stood frozen by the sound of Ma’s voice—not a whisper. Ma was mad.
Lilly kept running and pulling. She dropped her doll. Lilly glanced at Martin, then Aunt Ida. When they did nothing, she looked Ma in the eye. She challenged Ma with her stare, but she kept pulling.
“Stop that right now, young lady.” It was Ma’s mad voice. Ma’s “watch out” warning voice. It had been silent for a year.
Lilly jerked a bedsheet, and the wire line broke, dragging sixty feet of wash to the ground.
Ma lunged at her—the same Ma who could chase down her two small boys when they needed spanking. Ma grabbed Lilly by the apron, but Aunt Ida was suddenly there. Aunt Ida, who loved to say “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” didn’t say that today.
She stepped between them. “Martha, let’s just send this young lady to the well for water. We’ll have her rewash everything.”
Ma was shaking mad.
But Lilly was mad too, mad from a year of sadness. Lilly stomped toward the pump, passing Ma’s washstand. Out flashed her little hand. As fast as an ax cleaves kindling, she flipped the open bottle of patent medicine into the washtub of sudsy water.
Ma flew after her again, but this time Martin said, “Let her go, Ma. She’s got the grit to make you come back when the rest of us do nothing but tiptoe around you.” He had Ma’s attention. “Lilly needs you. We all need you. Pa will need you more than ever. You never care about anything anymore. You’re half asleep all the time from that medicine.”
Ma stooped to pick up the soiled sheets. “It’s been a hard year,” she said in her passive voice again. Martin didn’t know how to reply; Ma could have been referring to an uncommonly cold winter or a large snowfall. He watched, silent, while Ma searched for a clean spot on a damp sheet to catch the tears that started down her face.
Ma was crying.
Martin wanted to go to her, to say “That’s good Ma, let it out.” But Ma continued, “If only Dan didn’t have to die.”
“Have to die? He didn’t have to die.” Martin was surprised he spoke out loud. Were they going to talk about it now? In the garden, with the dirty sheets? But he couldn’t stop. “Dan didn’t have to die, any more than he had to always be reckless. He chose to be that way. It wasn’t a tree, Ma. When Chet and I got to the sledding hill, we told him not to go down that side. We told him it was dangerous with the road below, with old man Kearney’s dairy wagon at the bottom. But there was no stopping him.”
At the house Lilly pumped water furiously. Aunt Ida inched her way closer over the plowed soil.
“Dan was older; he should have been the responsible one. But Dan never listened to anybody. A boy on a sled is probably faster than a horse running flat out.”
Aunt Ida gathered sheets off the ground, looking like she wasn’t listening.
“Mr. Kearney pulled the wagon forward. I tried to stop him. I tried to stop the wagon. I hollered. I ran. Bu
t Mr. Kearney didn’t hear me. You remember how deaf he was? Dan couldn’t change the path he was on. The horses pulled the wagon box right in his path. His head . . .”
Ma’s hands flew to her breast. Aunt Ida bent her head.
Martin paused. When he spoke again his tone was spent. “I’m through being responsible for Dan. Sure, Lilly liked him best. He was the fun brother.” He shook his head, remembering. “When we’d go swimming, Dan would jump off dangerous cliffs while I’d watch Lilly on the shore. I still feel responsible for him, like it was my fault somehow.”
Finn nickered softly, calling Martin back to the plow.
“I can’t help feeling we’re here because of him. But you know what? Dan would never do this for me. He’d never live the life I have on this farm.”
Ma put a hand on Martin’s cheek. They looked into each other’s eyes, really looked. He decided to take responsibility for his brother one last time. “I know you blame me for Dan, that he died and I lived. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Ma’s eyes, which hadn’t been sharp or focused in a long time, widened in alarm. “No, Martin. No.” She gripped his shoulders. “I see now my grief has been a selfish thing. I never blamed you. I blame myself. And God maybe.” Ma dropped her hands and spoke to the ground. “I’m so sorry.”
Martin shook his head. “I have wanted to go back to Stillwater so bad. But I’ve been missing friends who’ve never even written to me. Maybe all I’ve really been missing is our family, not a place. Maybe the place doesn’t matter.” Martin passed the harness through his hands, looking for a frayed section, then stretched it across the plowshare, severing it in half. “We’re like a harness; we get broken, maybe even lose an entire section. But mending is an option. Never the same, but mended. Shorter maybe, but stronger. A harness rarely breaks in the same spot twice.”
Ma squeezed her mouth and nodded.
“We need you, Ma.” With his hand on her elbow Martin turned her around. “We need you to care about what goes in this garden, and to make us supper at night, and to take after Lilly when she disobeys.”