Growing Up Ivy

by Peggy Dymond Leavey

  “Seems after last year, the shopkeepers in town had a meeting,” the man said. “Decided travellers weren’t welcome anymore. Claimed they were taking business away from the stores in Birch Hills.

  “So, we all get there last evening — and there’s fewer of us every year now — and we all start to set up. Then, this here delegation shows up and tells us we’ve got to move on. The people carried signs and there was a lot of angry words spoke.

  “The littlest girl here was feeling poorly, so they let us stay till this morning when the druggist opened up for us, so’s we could get her some medicine.”

  “This is real bad news,” Alva said. “But suppose we’ve got something they don’t sell in town?”

  The man shook his head. “Don’t seem to matter. We’ve got some real nice yard goods in our wagon. Straight from the cotton mill in Ridgeland. I bet there’s a few in that town who can afford something better than flour-sack ‘lengeree’ — but they’re not about to buy it from us.”

  “I’m real sorry about that.” Alva shot Ivy a glance. “Ivy here was looking forward to the fair. Heck, so was I, if the truth be told.”

  “We’ve got shoes,” Ivy said, brightly. “All kinds and sizes.”

  “Well, they don’t want ’em.” And with that, the driver clucked at his horses, and they headed away down the road, the children on the back waving forlornly at Ivy.

  “Do you think any of those kids are wearing underwear made out of flour sacks?” she asked, when they were alone again on the road.

  “If they’re lucky,” Alva said. “These are not easy times, Ivy. Some folks say what we’re going through now is what’s called a depression. It could be it’s only going to get worse.”

  “But we don’t have to go back, do we, Papa?”

  “No, we don’t,” Alva said. “I still have to see if I can find someone to fix that cart wheel. — Gee up, Dora! — I think I’d like to have a look at this place called Birch Hills.”

  13

  Birch Hills

  On the high ground that overlooked the village, Ivy and Alva passed an open field where the grass had been trampled. A Union Jack was flapping in the breeze. A banner, held to a tree by one remaining cord, lay draped over the ground.

  “Go home.” Alva read one of the hand-painted signs attached to wooden stakes stuck in the grass near the entrance to the campground.

  “Peddlers, go home,” said Ivy. “That means us, Papa. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  At the top of the main street of Birch Hills, above all the shops, they pulled up at a feed mill, a barn-like structure with a pull-through for wagons. “It’ll be fine, Ivy,” Alva said. “We aren’t here to try to sell the folks anything. I’m just going to talk to the boys in here. See if they know where’s the best place to get a wheel fixed.”

  He swung down from the wagon, and Ivy sat and surveyed the town below. It looked friendly enough. The shops on the main street were just opening for the day’s business, and there were few people out and about. A couple of youths on bicycles rode past, craning their necks to see who the strangers with the caravan might be.

  Ivy watched a shopkeeper down the street come out to sweep the sidewalk in front of his establishment. Another appeared and began turning a crank which lowered an awning over his shop window. They both took long looks up the hill toward the wagon. Together they crossed the street and went into a store on the other side.

  After the men came back out, a small group of people began to gather. There was much gesturing toward the caravan. Ivy’s heart began to beat faster.

  She hoped they were just curious, but when they started moving together up the hill in her direction, talking amongst themselves and collecting more supporters as they advanced, Ivy knew they had something on their minds. She gave an involuntary shiver.

  The citizens stopped in front of Dora. One of the men stepped out of the group and walked right up to where Ivy sat.

  “She’s just a kid,” he said, with some surprise, to the others.

  Ivy cast an anxious glance at the door of the feed mill, willing her father to appear.

  “The man who was with her went inside,” someone in the crowd called out.

  “You folks peddlers?” It was the spokesman.

  “We came about a broken wheel,” Ivy said. “My father will be back in a minute.”

  “But you’re peddlers,” he said.

  “We’re travellers,” Ivy said. “My father is a shoe salesman.”

  The man sneered. “Forget the fancy talk. Whatever you call yourselves, you’re not welcome here. We thought we’d cleared all you people out.”

  Suddenly, a boy at the far edge of the crowd picked up a small stone and threw it in the direction of the caravan. It struck Dora on the left flank, startling her, and she moved forward — not very far — but far enough that a few people who’d crowded too close thought they were in danger of being trampled. The tone of their voices turned angry.

  Ivy snatched up the reins. “Whoa, Dora!”

  The obedient creature had already stopped, but Ivy could see her ears twitch in agitation. Ivy gave the crowd of unfriendly citizens the fiercest glare she could muster, though her heart was hammering in her ears.

  All at once, Alva was there, walking around in front of Dora, patting her neck and saying something to calm her.

  “Well, folks, I can tell this here’s no welcoming committee,” he said. He pushed his way through the cluster around his caravan.

  “We made it plain, mister,” the spokesman said. “We want no peddlers in Birch Hills. It’s hard enough to keep our shops going, without you people coming in and stealing our customers.”

  “I steal from no one, sir,” Alva said evenly. He climbed up onto the wagon and sat down, taking the reins from Ivy. “Good day to you, then.”

  The crowd shifted a little to let them through.

  “I think you are the rudest people I have ever met in my entire life!” Ivy said in a loud voice. “I’d never set foot in this miserable town for all the tea in China.”

  She was the only one who heard Alva’s warning, “Ivy. That’s enough now.”

  They moved off with what Ivy considered was great dignity, although it was hard to maintain when they had to circle at the bottom of the street and pass the jeering crowd once more, on the way out of town. Still, Alva and Ivy both managed to keep their spines stiff and their eyes straight ahead.

  “That’s that, I guess,” was all Alva had to say, as they passed again the deserted campground. “I got no help from the folks at the feed mill neither.”

  “We didn’t do anything to make those people treat us like that,” Ivy said. Even when she and Frannie had endured the wrath of their landlords because the rent was overdue, she’d known the anger had been justified. “They hated us, Papa. For no reason.”

  “Don’t take it personally, Ivy.”

  “But it was personal. I was the one sitting there when they came up the hill, looking like they wanted to tear someone to pieces.”

  “Those folks were just het up at travellers in general,” her father said. “You heard what the man with the sick child said this morning. The townspeople are afraid the travellers are going to take away their livelihoods. It’s natural they’d want to protect that.”

  “They could have tried to find a better way to do it.”

  “You’d think so,” Alva agreed. “But that’s what happens sometimes when a crowd gets going. All it takes is one or two hotheads, and if the rest are followers, things can get ugly. First thing you know, you’ve got yourselves a mob. And common sense goes out the window.”

  “You’ve seen that happen, Papa?”

  “Saw it with my own eyes, at one of the mines up north. Bunch of fools, upset at the boss, let themselves get talked into tearing down the
pit head, with their bare hands.”

  “If you hadn’t come along when you did, Papa,” Ivy said, “I can just imagine what they’d have done to me.”

  “Well, I did come along,” Alva said. “And that’s the end of it. It’s not like you, Ivy, to think of the worst thing that could happen.”

  Alva had nothing more to say on the subject.

  At midday, they stopped for lunch in a grove of trees and ate a few of the ripe tomatoes they’d bought from a farm stand along the road that morning. Ivy spent the rest of the afternoon bent over her book, pencil in hand. Writing didn’t help her to understand the humiliation she’d suffered, but after she had recorded the event in her book, she did feel better. It was as if, once written, she didn’t have to think of it again.

  Toward evening they passed their cart, lying like a wounded creature in the grass at the side of the road. They stopped only long enough to leave off the broken pieces of the wheel.

  “Anyone who wants it is welcome to it,” Alva said, and he dusted off his hands.

  Ivy felt compelled to imagine a happier ending for the little cart, to keep her heart from breaking at the idea of abandoning it.

  “Maybe whoever finds it will be a person who really needs it, Papa. That person will fix it up and suddenly, having a little cart like that will make the most wonderful difference in his life.”

  “Now that sounds more like the Ivy Chalmers I know.”

  She would try not to disappoint him again.

  14

  The Birthday Present

  “It’s time that I admit it,” Alva said, stirring the campfire with a stick of kindling one evening. “The days of the salesman who travels by horse and wagon are over.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ivy begged. “Please, Papa.” But she’d watched with an aching heart as her father struggled to keep from breaking into a run earlier that day as a man chased him off his property. Sales had not gotten any better after the ugly incident in Birch Hills.

  “It’s the truth, Ivy,” Alva said. “It’s looking us right in the eye. Now that more folks have cars, they can drive into town and shop for themselves. Don’t need to wait for the traveller to call.”

  The light from the fire cast deep valleys of shadow on Alva’s face. Ivy had noticed lately how loosely his clothes seemed to hang on his lean body. She knew how tired he must be, and she had begun to worry about his health.

  “So what do you want to do then, Papa?” she asked. “Summer’s not even over yet.” She made up her mind that she would accept whatever decision he made about the rest of the journey.

  “Pretty near over,” Alva said. “I think we’d best take the shortest route home now. Get you back to your grandmother’s before the end of August.”

  It was the last thing Ivy wanted to hear. She felt like a deflated balloon. Hugging her knees to her chest, she hid her face from him.

  “Your grandmother will want to help you get ready for school, child,” Alva said, his voice soft. “What grade will you be going in?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “Junior Fourth, I guess. I don’t always go to school.”

  “Ivy, look at me. Why not?”

  She raised her head and gave a shrug. “Because Momma and I have to move sometimes. I just get started at one school, and then we’re off again to a new place. Anyway, school seems like a waste of time to me. I can learn more out of the books I get at the library.”

  “School’s important, Ivy. Take that from someone who didn’t get enough of it.”

  “Well, Grandmother told me that these days even lawyers are selling brushes door-to-door.”

  “Likely true enough.” Alva tossed the stick into the fire, causing a shower of sparks.

  “What I really want to do is write, Papa,” Ivy said, with passion. “I want to be a writer. I have stories in my head just bursting to get out.”

  “Pretty sure a writer needs to go to school,” said Alva.

  The cicadas rattled from sun-up to dark on the hottest days, and the dust rose with every clop of Dora’s hooves. Every stream or swimming hole they passed was an invitation to Ivy.

  On the day of Ivy’s thirteenth birthday, just as they passed a signpost indicating that they were two miles from the village of Hammond, she caught a glimpse of sunlight on water, glittering like silver between the trees.

  “This would be a perfect place to spend the night, Papa.”

  They had learned, after Birch Hills, not to try making any sales in town, and this was far enough away from Hammond that no one would try to run them off.

  “I think there’s a lake down there,” Ivy said. “Come on, Papa. Let’s have a swim.”

  “It’s only two o’clock,” Alva said, but he pulled back on the reins anyway. “Well, seeing as this is a special day,” he said. “You can have a swim while I take stock of the inventory.”

  Dora drew the caravan into the trees above the lake. “But it’s way too hot inside, Papa, to count shoes,” Ivy pointed out.

  Alva was forced to agree. He lifted the back window of the caravan to try to coax a breeze through, and he and Ivy went down to the water together.

  Before them lay a small lake with a beach of smooth stones. “Looks pretty safe, but let me go first.” Alva pulled off his boots and waded out, splashing water over his face and forearms.

  “Doesn’t drop off too quick. You can go ahead,” he said, returning to shore. “No farther than your waist, mind. Think I’ll just go up and sit for a spell. I’m feeling a little tired.”

  Ivy gave him a close look. “Are you all right, Papa? We can count the stock together, after it cools off. I’ll help you. Promise me you won’t try to do it now.”

  “I’ll have no trouble keeping that promise,” he said, with a wry smile. “But you won’t mind if I stretch out in the shade, will you?”

  “No, Papa. You should go up and rest.”

  Ivy waded into the water till she was waist deep. It was deliciously cool and she ducked down, forcing her dress under the water, spreading her arms and twirling about.

  Only once had she ever owned a bathing suit, one childhood summer when she’d been given a hand-me-down in a deep shade of red. The colour had bled into the white piping around the neck and legs, turning it pink.

  She’d worn that scratchy bathing suit proudly whenever she and Frannie went with Gloria to Cherry Beach, happy not to have to strip down to her cotton bloomers that summer.

  She had never learned to swim well, but could hold her breath and open her eyes underwater. She used to try catching the minnows that darted through her fingers, or to pick up pretty stones off the bottom to show to Frannie, who sat on the crowded sand, fanning herself and chatting with Gloria.

  Ivy turned toward shore, that memory so vivid in her mind that she half expected to see the two young women lounging there. But where was Papa?

  When Alva still hadn’t come down after what seemed like a very long time, Ivy decided that he must indeed have fallen asleep. She lingered on the beach until curiosity got the better of her, and she climbed the bank to the caravan.

  There was no sign of her father. She looked inside the wagon, but he wasn’t there. He had unhitched Dora and filled the horse’s tub with water from the icebox, but now he was nowhere in sight.

  Where would he have gone, after telling her he was so tired?

  Ivy looked back down the road in the direction they had come. She started walking, scanning the road through the shimmer of heat and checking over her shoulder every few seconds, unsure which way he’d gone. Her dress dried quickly in the blazing sun.

  Finally, she saw Alva coming toward her.

  “Did you think you’d lost me?” he teased, when he reached her side and saw the look of relief on her face. He was wearing an uncharacteristic grin. “Happy birthday, Ivy,�
� he said.

  Before she could say anything, Alva held out his hands, and Ivy saw that he was holding a tiny kitten. Its coat was the most unusual shade of bluish grey, and its eyes were the colour of the August sky. The soft creature looked out of place in those rough hands.

  Ivy took the kitten from him gently and held it against her neck. “Oh, Papa, is it really for me?”

  “Of course. Do you see anyone else around here having a birthday?”

  He drew a jar of milk from of his trouser pocket. “This will do till we get to Hammond,” he said. “We need another chunk of ice anyway.”

  “I read what it said on a sign by the road, a ways back,” Alva explained, hitching Dora up to the wagon again. “‘Free kittens.’ Thought you might’ve seen it, too. But I guess you were too busy looking for a place to swim.”

  “But you saw it, Papa, and you knew what it said, too! Didn’t I tell you that you could learn to read?”

  Alva steadied her as she climbed back up onto the wagon and handed her the kitten when she was settled. “That you did, Ivy,” he said. “That you did.”

  ***

  By the time they arrived at their camp for the night, on the far side of the village, Ivy had come up with a perfect name for the kitten. “I used to pretend that grandmother’s place on Arthur Road was Camelot, so I’m going to call her Guinevere. Isn’t that the most beautiful name? Guinevere was Arthur’s queen.”

  Alva frowned. “Is that a boy’s name? It’s a male cat, you know.”

  “Oh, is it? Well, that’s all right. I’ll just call him Merlin.” And Ivy proceeded to tell her father the part the magician had played in the legend of King Arthur.

  The August evening was chilly, and they sat close to the fire after supper that night. Merlin was snug inside the front of Ivy’s old green sweater. She had already introduced him to Dora, holding the mewing ball of fur up to the horse’s nose.

  Ivy watched the sparks from the fire fly upward and disappear into the dark. “I certainly didn’t expect you to give me a birthday present, Papa.” It pleased her to see the happiness in Alva’s face.