Let's go For Broke

by Mary Lasswell

  “This is an emergency,” she said to the clerk. “Could we possibly have the lights and water turned on today? The bathrooms…” The girl smiled and promised to put a red tag on the order. “It won’t be until after two, and be sure there is someone at home to let the men in.”

  “We’ll be there to receive them with open arms,” Miss Tinkham assured her.

  “These here receipts is same as money.” Mrs. Rasmussen folded them carefully and put them in the zipper compartment of her purse.

  “That red brick building is the library,” Miss Tinkham said. “I will walk. By the time you have finished your shopping, I feel sure my mission will be accomplished.”

  “We’ll come after you,” Mrs. Feeley said. “You said toothpaste, dental floss, an’ what else?”

  “A big bottle of glue and some small cans of paint. We need that material for our signs. Also a small brush.” Miss Tinkham waved a graceful goodbye and ambled towards one of the main sources of her happiness in life. “I’ll take out a card while I’m there.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen and Mrs. Feeley put N. Carnation carefully between them as they entered a large glittering supermarket. They sensed the fear she must have of such establishments.

  Mrs. Feeley gazed ecstatically at the display of beer of all kinds.

  “Handsome,” she said.

  Mrs. Rasmussen nodded: “But we sure got enough o’ them sweet potatoes in a hurry. Bad’s that time we was gonna have mush an’ milk for supper at the Ark. Beans an’ bacon first.”

  She had learned years ago to read the labels on all boxes, packages, sacks, and cans. She knew that the finest coffee could be purchased in paper sacks and the beans ground exactly the way she wanted them. Pulverized as fine as she could get it, the coffee went twice as far and tasted lots better. She always dumped it into a half-gallon glass barrel pickles had come in and kept it tightly covered in the icebox.

  “Now take Bisquick,” she said, “I ain’t crazy about it, but they’s so many things you can do with it, an’ you can’t mix up your own for that price. Just like the pancake mix, with eggs already in it.” She took two large packages of each. Ten pounds of rice. Ten pounds of pink Mexican frijoles, no pinto beans for her. Ten pounds of dried black-eyed peas. Two five-pound sacks of white cornmeal. Ten pounds of Idaho potatoes, and a five-pound sack of brown onions.

  “We’ll get the bacon scraps this time,” Mrs. Feeley laughed. Five pounds for one dollar and fifteen cents. “Grease down a lotta cabbages with that.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen saw a large smoked picnic shoulder, already sliced. It was too good to pass up. “They’re the cheapest of all,” she said. “I fry the nice slices and the rough ones is good for boiled dinners or ham omulets.”

  “Eggs!” Mrs. Feeley said. They took two dozen medium size.

  At the day-old bread table, she loaded up on long loaves of French bread and good round loaves of rye.

  N. Carnation was standing before a shelf full of novelty paper, and seemed to be trying to tell Mrs. Rasmussen something. She had a flat package of peacock blue crepe paper in her hand. She handed it to Mrs. Rasmussen with two dimes.

  “You like that?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  N. Carnation smiled blissfully.

  Mrs. Rasmussen handed her back the dimes. “Git some more.” She started picking out shocking pink, emerald green, and a violent Prussian blue. N. Carnation caught on, and took a bright lemon yellow and a brilliant orange.

  “Gawd only knows what she wants with ’em,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  Mrs. Rasmussen shrugged: “She’s entitled to somethin’ nice.”

  One grocery cart was full to the brim and the ladies had to start on a second one. There was a special on beer and they took advantage of it.

  “An’ one case cold,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. The checker smiled at her as he watched her wrap it up in several copies of the jumbo edition of Shopper’s News.

  “You know what to do with it,” he said.

  “You can’t git no argument on that, bub.” Mrs. Feeley helped with the carry-out. N. Carnation carried her precious crepe paper. Old-Timer jumped down from the truck and helped load the boxes. He had picked up several more fruit crates. Mrs. Rasmussen was satisfied with her purchases. Most of them would keep indefinitely. She had laid out twenty-three precious dollars for food and drink, but meal for meal, she bet there wasn’t anybody in the U.S.A. that got more for their food dollar. She even pioneered a little in thrift.

  “That five-pound box o’ dried skim milk was so cheap I took it to try it out. Seemed to me like canned milk amounted to payin’ somebody’s water bill. I can add water an’ it’ll be plenty good enough for cookin’.”

  “Man, that tripe an’ onions you make, cooked in milk with all them potatoes, is sure fine with lots o’ crackers,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Trouble is findin’ tripe,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Miss Tinkham’s good for another hour anyway in that liberry. Give her them ol’ books an’ she’s in heaven. I was thinkin’ to go by that turkey-packin’ shed where N. Carnation works an’ seein’ what they have, if it ain’t too much outa the way.”

  “Turkey! Turkey!” Mrs. Feeley went through plucking motions.

  N. Carnation looked at Mrs. Rasmussen questioningly.

  “Worky, you worky. Where is it?” the chef said.

  “Dondy star?” Mrs. Feeley burst out gleefully.

  “Too much, too much,” N. Carnation gestured away down the highway.

  “Vamoose!” Mrs. Feeley got up on the front seat beside Old-Timer and put N. Carnation on the outside to point out the way.

  Following muddled directions, Old-Timer drove the truck into a Mexican settlement. The signs on the stores had Spanish names, there were lots of secondhand stores and street stalls. Sure enough, in front of them was the big open-sided poultry processing plant. Turkey-pickers of assorted sizes and hues worked side by side. The ladies got down to have a better look. Mrs. Rasmussen saw that the retail store with the big refrigerated showcases was on the other side. They went in and she looked at the prices on various parts of turkeys.

  “A body could sure do fine here,” she said. “But I’m only lookin’ today. We’ll buy next time.” She stopped and pointed her finger at a big pile of ground meat in a white pan. “What’s that?” she asked the attendant.

  “Ground turkey, kinda like hamburger, thirty-nine a pound.”

  “Nothin’ but turkey in it? Gimme three pounds.” She laid a dollar and twenty cents down. “We can’t pass that up. Jus’ think o’ the loaf an’ cutlets an’ all I can make outa that with toasted bread crumbs.”

  “The boys ain’t comin’ back till Saturday, Friday the soonest. You won’t have no icebox.”

  “I’ll bake them loaves soon as we get home, an’ set ’em in the cooler. Be kinder like a lunch snack sliced cold. Sure go good with the beer!”

  They went back out to look at the plant again. At the door a fat Mexican woman stopped and spoke to N. Carnation: “Hallo, Chorty!”

  “Boss Lady,” N. Carnation explained.

  Mrs. Feeley laughed: “Chorty, huh?”

  “She’s too little. But she’s some picker. You wanta work, too?”

  “Not right now,” Mrs. Feeley said, “but we might hafta any day.”

  N. Carnation said something to Boss Lady in Spanish and gestured towards her friends. The forewoman nodded and said: “We’ll be right back. She wants a bunch o’ feathers.”

  “Feathers! What on earth is she gonna do? Make her a pillow?” Mrs. Rasmussen said to Mrs. Feeley.

  “Maybe put ’em in her hair, ’long with the crepe paper. Reckon that beer’s in danger o’ gettin’ hot in the truck?”

  “Might.” Mrs. Rasmussen smiled. She had a small beer opener in her purse, standard equipment. Old-Timer was dozing on the front seat, but came to in time to have a beer. Mrs. Rasmussen reached into one of the cartons of groceries and handed him a can of pipe tobacco.

  “I had another brainstorm, like Miss Tinkha
m says. This here’s Thursday, ain’t it?”

  “I’m always Thursday,” Mrs. Feeley giggled and swigged her beer.

  “Aw, you!” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We could buy a block o’ ice at the fillin’ station an’ keep this ground turkey a day more. Sure make fine turkey steaks in case them boys do come back. I could fry ’em in butter, an’ make a little sauce with sherry wine in it. Let’s get a extry pint o’ boolk sherry. Them boys is nice an’ deserves the best.”

  N. Carnation and Boss Lady returned with two big grass sacks full of damp turkey feathers.

  “Took a little longer,” Boss Lady explained. “She didn’t want nothin’ but from white turkeys an’ breast feathers only.”

  “Have a beer,” Mrs. Rasmussen said and handed them each one.

  “Salud.” Boss Lady showed her gold teeth. “Chorty says you’re sure fine.”

  “Muy jaitones!” N. Carnation lifted her beer can in salute.

  “Real high tone.” Boss Lady downed her beer and mashed the can flat with one hand before throwing it away. The occupants of the truck looked impressed.

  “See all them people sittin’ there on the benches?” Boss Lady pointed to the benches near the bus stop across the street. “They don’t wanna work. They’re sittin’ on their social security! It ain’t enough an’ they’re iss-scared if they do work a few hours, the government will take it all away from ’em. No me des tú una plantada! I’m tellin’ Chorty not to stand me up tomorra. She’s about the most reliable one I got, even if there ain’t full-time work for her.”

  “Ain’t there no bus goes by here?” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Goes right down the freeway,” Boss Lady said.

  “Wonder where she could get on from our place?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “Porqué no agarras el esteche?” Boss Lady asked N. Carnation. “We call it the stage, like in the Westerns.”

  N. Carnation murmured something that Boss Lady translated.

  “She says you get the bus above the underpass where you got arrested, but she didn’t have any money when she went to work, and when she came home, she didn’t want to spend it on the fare.”

  “Ast her will she promise to take the bus from now on,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “She says ‘yes,’” Boss Lady translated. “I’m glad I metcha. Adiosito!” She waddled off waving back in a friendly way, fluffing up the back of her permanent wave with one hand, waving with the other.

  “Sure nice woman,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “Wayna!” Mrs. Feeley shouted at N. Carnation.

  “Rebuena,” N. Carnation said.

  “Let’s get the sherry wine for the cookin’.” Mrs. Rasmussen saw the sign of a liquor store down the block. “Then we gotta get Miss Tinkham.”

  Twenty-five cent’s worth of sherry was a fine investment in good eating and would last a long time with what she already had. The rat cheese she had bought would be grated fine and mixed with sherry and a handful of comino seeds, plus a dash of Tabasco. Anybody had a glass jar full of that didn’t ever have to worry about people dropping in. Keep good without ice, too. Old-Timer loaded on the fifty-pound block of ice at the service station.

  Miss Tinkham was waiting on the steps of the library, happily immersed in a book. She had a large pile of gaudy-covered magazines beside her.

  “Whatever you found out,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “it musta been good.”

  Miss Tinkham nodded: “Keep your fingers crossed. The reference librarian was wonderful. I always wondered about the value of memoirs left by people, war experiences and the like, but now,” she patted a fat yellow book beside her, “I bless the men who leave such complete factual records. They get little recognition by the library world, and other writers steal them blind without so much as a mention of the individual’s name. But in this case, our man may be the very means of helping us restore an individual’s human rights and status!”

  “If you say so!” Mrs. Feeley grinned. “Have a beer.”

  “Such opulence,” Miss Tinkham cried as she helped unload the cartons of food and drink.

  “N. Carnation wanted that there crepe paper,” Mrs. Feeley said, “an’ them ol’ soggy feathers. We got the glue an’ the paints.”

  The smell of the turkey and rice smote them as they entered the kitchen. The cats were lined up by the kitchen window looking in, their noses pointing skyward as they inhaled. N. Carnation trotted happily from the shelves to the table setting out the dishes. She folded some paper napkins and put them in a jelly jar in the center of the table.

  Mrs. Feeley opened the beer and Mrs. Rasmussen dished up.

  “San Martín did bring money, N. Carnation.” Miss Tinkham smiled. “We must remember him with some more dimes.”

  The meal was quickly dispatched and the diners made good use of the folded washcloth Mrs. Rasmussen placed in a bowl of hot water on the table.

  “I gotta make me a icebox.” The chef pushed back her chair and went to the porch to get an empty box. She lined it with a carton and wrapped the ice in several folds of newspaper, then placed her precious turkey hamburger on top of it. She put in the two pounds of margarine she had bought, and chocked in the remaining cans of cold beer, then covered the whole box with an old tablecloth.

  N. Carnation washed the dishes and carried the bones out to the cats. When she came back she had four of the empty gallon cans with her. She got hold of Mrs. Rasmussen’s sleeve and the two of them hoisted the buckets of drinking water up onto a counter top and covered them with a dish towel. Miss Tinkham came out with a pencil and a composition book.

  “Am I needed at this moment?” she inquired. “I must put down all the pertinent data about N. Carnation, as I seem to think better on paper.”

  “Nothin’ to do till they come to turn on the light,” Mrs. Feeley said. “I’m goin’ out to check on them rats. Seems like they ain’t as many as before. Them cats has cleaned up.”

  “N. Carnation’s hatchin’ somethin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Makes me feel good to see her takin’ part on her own thataway. She’s makin’ signs like she wants the scissors an’ thread or a needle, maybe all three.”

  She went to her room and returned with the sewing box and a piece of folded material over her arm. It was one of the remnants she could never pass up, a white percale with a red and green printed border at one end.

  “Wayna for you,” she handed the goods to N. Carnation, along with a spool of white thread. The little woman fingered it admiringly. “You! Make a skirt an’ top.” She finally had to unfold the goods and drape it around the small figure. She took the scissors and cut the skirt length. Then she studied N. Carnation’s square-necked white blouse, washed threadbare. She ought to be able to cut one like that.

  N. Carnation took the solid white top part of the material from her.

  “Con permiso,” she said, and tore the white material into a series of straight bands that looked like nothing at all to Mrs. Rasmussen’s scandalized eyes. She watched how N. Carnation folded the parts of the blouse and put them together. She had never seen anything like it, and couldn’t figure it out until N. Carnation folded the oblong that was the sleeve and showed her how it worked. “Estilo índio,” N. Carnation explained. The underarm line was on a seamless bias fold, and Mrs. Rasmussen could see that of course it was very practical for it would stretch instead of tearing out as a kimono sleeve would.

  “Wayna,” she said when she finally figured it out. “I’m gonna make one for Miss Tinkham. Sure beats me. I guess real poor people don’t have scissors.” Mrs. Feeley came in with the announcement that the water was on out in the yard.

  “I tried them fassets to see if they’d budge, an’ here come the water.”

  “He musta come while we was out,” Mrs. Rasmussen said and tried the sink faucet. The water was brown and rusty, but water. She ran to open all the faucets in the bathroom to clean them out.

  When she returned N. Carnation had the four gallon cans full of water heating on the stove. T
hey were clean and shining, and she had the four colors of crepe paper on the table cutting it into fine slivers like grass. Mrs. Rasmussen decided the fascinating process demanded Miss Tinkham’s presence.

  When they returned, N. Carnation was coming in from outdoors with four neatly trimmed little switches in one hand. In the other she carried one of the bags of feathers. Mrs. Feeley came in goggle-eyed to watch.

  “What on earth can she be planning to do?” Miss Tinkham hovered near.

  N. Carnation put each pile of colored, shredded paper into a separate can of boiling water and stirred carefully with one of her little switches.

  “She’s makin’ dye!” Mrs. Rasmussen announced. “I can at least stir.” She took the switch out of N. Carnation’s hand and took charge of stirring the dye. N. Carnation reached into the bag of feathers and formed a small bunch, quill end down. She took white thread and wrapped it around the end of the bunch and tied it. Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Feeley caught on and began making bunches which they handed to N. Carnation to tie securely.

  “She’s going to dye these,” Miss Tinkham guessed. “But what for is beyond me.”

  The assembly line method worked surprisingly well and soon they had a large carton full of feather bunches, still grayish white and limp. N. Carnation held up her hand to signal “enough.” She counted them out and divided them into four groups. She tied each of the four groups of bunches together loosely with thread about four inches apart. Then she lifted the pots of dye onto the floor and looked around for something.

  “Newspapers,” Mrs. Rasmussen laughed. “Can’t do nothin’ ’thout newspapers.” She spread them on the floor and N. Carnation lowered the first bunch of feathers into the can of red dye. They took the color readily, but still looked bedraggled.

  “Mexican pink,” Miss Tinkham laughed, “there is no way of getting away from it. But of course we call it ‘shocking’ or ‘hot’ pink.”

  The next batch went into the blue dye, then some were tinted yellow, and the last bunch orange. N. Carnation lifted the newspapers and her friends followed her outside to watch as she strung the feather clumps by the threads over low branches of trees and shrubs to dry. Then she took the cans of dye off the stove and covered them carefully on the porch.