Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  We went to school earlier than usual that day, Walter and I, in the buggy behind Old Buttons, Charley driving, delighted little Charles tucked in the seat between his father and me. It was so cold that Charley had fastened a brown Army blanket from the dashboard to the hood, having cut a little hole in front of his eyes so that he could see the road. He had to see to drive, but I snuggled back, with my arm around little Charles, and Walter leaning against my knee. I needed no sight of eyes to be able to see that country as it lay, dazzling white, from horizon to horizon, a page of loneliness in the book of my life.

  I must here make a confession which really belongs in the autobiography I shall never write. It belongs there because it is strictly about me and my writing. Whatever curse the passion for writing has been to me—and it has been that—it has also been the means of keeping me sane. As I look back over those years, I can say truthfully, considering everything (that which I tell you and that which I will not tell you in this book), that only my passion for writing kept me out of the insane asylum or my grave.

  I think I recognized the beginning of something that might overwhelm me when I stood, as I did many times, on the toothpick-pillared porch, looking across the white valley under the radiant light of an incandescent moon in frosted glass—such a flood of light as one might read by. I used to look across the unblotted snow, with no mark of any kind except two white haystacks which the rabbits had undermined until they looked like huge mushrooms. These were on a scrap of land which Sam Curry was farming on his own, in addition to the Endicott acres.

  I could see the road below, and the sight I saw will never again be duplicated—a river of rabbits, running from west to east, the closely packed little animals moving like rippling water, on their way somewhere. And near at hand, because we were the invaders of the wilderness and not they, the sharp, staccato barks of the desert dogs, coyotes, and their long, maniacal wails. The sight, the sound, they struck a chill to my heart.

  As I sat forcing myself to study after school, when I was already tired beyond my strength, I often lifted my eyes from my books, and there through the window, across the dazzling, alabaster snow, the cold, white Minidokas stood, monumental, veined with blue, a faint pinkish light illuminating them from the setting sun. I forgot the page I had been studying, and a chill struck to my heart.

  Something was happening to me and mine, and I did not know what. I could not penetrate the future. I had not come because I had wanted to come, but here I was. What could we do about this casting of our lives out here in the wilderness if the farm failed? And it might fail. I had not the comfort of Charley’s confidence. Why should it succeed? What could we give the world that it needed, and, even so, how could we get it to the consumers, and at what price?

  Just the impractical, sometimes despairing thoughts of a foolish woman, brought on by the sight of that lonely, never-ending snow, stretching across the wilderness. A way out? I must write one. Yes, I must write one! I never did. A farm is no part-time job. Neither is writing, if it is done right. Those who have time for part-time jobs have no real jobs at all. After that first winter, when the snow chilled my heart with its terrible loneliness, I was able to go on, love for that wilderness land of Idaho growing in my heart, but never enough to blind me to a yearning for some way out—never enough to make me willing to go down, with my family, a sacrifice.

  Very cleverly I start to tell you something interesting, and then switch off on myself and my own feelings, as our boresome acquaintances buttonhole us on the street, while we stand, first on one foot and then on the other, eager to be off. But we must listen to a tale of woe: how every member of the family has something the matter with his internals, from gallstones to cancer, until you have the impression of a great mass of diseased intestines, livers, kidneys, lungs, hearts, and duodenums—I forget what a duodenum is, but it sounds bad. I am not heartless, just so pitying that this sort of thing, given wholesale, makes me sick. I suspect that folks who go around demanding sympathy are just plain selfish, particularly when you only saw them that night at a lecture and unfortunately got introduced.

  Please accept this as my crawling, humble apology for forcing on you the feelings I had out of seeing snow, and we shall get back to the day Homer and Keith played their practical joke. Charley stopped the horse in front of the funny little despondent gate in front of the ugly, weathered school-house and removed the Army blanket. The brilliant white of snow was blinding. Weeds along the way were little silver trees, sparkling with diamonds, and there were diamonds, diamonds everywhere, laid out for exhibition on the white plush of snow in Winter’s vast show-case.

  I knew the children were in the school-house, faithful William—pale-blue eyes, conscientious, dull face—and fussy Harry—little brown eyes, agitated face, yet not less dull—being the self-appointed fire-builders, who never failed me. We see such unattractive children, ignored by everyone while they are young, and they almost invariably turn into our solid citizens, with ordinary, standard, good homes, all cut from the same pattern, good, ordinary women for wives, and children of their own having every opportunity but that of genius, a questionable blessing.

  The door bursts open. Out puffs a volume of black smoke and, fleeing from it, fussy Harry and faithful William with, close on their heels, all the rest of the school-children, excepting only Homer and Keith. I did not notice this exception at the time, remembering it later. I jumped to the conclusion that the school-house was on fire. Charley told Walter and little Charles to stay in the buggy. He had already tied Buttons to the gate-post. The two of us entered the smoky school-room.

  The stove door had been left open—a big, pot-bellied stove—and from its mouth the smoke was pouring. Charley closed the stove door quickly and then went out into the snowy yard, followed by me. My brain had imagined no reason for the smoke, but Charley’s mind was quicker than that in my head.

  “One of you boys get up on the roof and look down the chimney.”

  “I’ll go, Mr. Greenwood.” It was faithful William, and he was climbing from window to eaves in no time, while I then observed that Homer and Keith had joined us but had not been eager to offer, like William, although they were gazing upward, watching his progress with curiously half-smiling, expectant faces.

  William was now just two legs, waving and dangling out of the chimney-top, struggling, I would say, with some unseen impediment. Out he comes, triumphantly waving a piece of clothing. “Here’s suthin’, Mr. Greenwood,” he calls, “and this ain’t all,” and he tosses a man’s coat to Charley, who immediately begins to prowl the pockets, rewarded by nothing. “Here ‘tis,” calls William again, and down comes the vest belonging to the coat. Charley fingers in the pockets of this and, as William drops beside us, draws forth a receipt for a bill of goods, made out to Homer J. Stillton.

  A cry from Elida Stillton: “That’s Pa’s vest and coat, Homer Stillton! You’re gonna git it...you’re gonna git it good!”

  We all turned back to the school-house. Charley stuffed more stubborn brush into the pot-bellied stove and left us. The same sense of impending justice hung over the school all day. I said not a word, cruelly conscious that both culprits would rather have had me speak, and be over it, than to keep that silence, for they felt certain that act would not be overlooked. Only a lazy teacher overlooks anything, although she may decide to ignore some things until she knows better what to do. Besides, I had taken possession of the Homer J. Stillton vest and coat, and Homer had to get them back before the righteous Elida made her father enhance their value by means of his imagination, if these pieces of clothing continued absent.

  Just before closing-time the inevitable words came: “I would like to speak to Homer and Keith right after school.”

  Again I kept the boys waiting, purposely, while I put work for the morrow on the ragged blackboard.

  Then I turned to the boys, who were fidgeting near my desk with grave faces. “Here’s your father’s coat and vest, Homer,” I said. That was all. I neve
r stuffed a chimney to smoke out anybody, but I think I should like to do it, given the right people.

  Both boys drew breath and looked up brightly. And both said something like the following: “We never done that fer devilment ag’in you, Mrs. Greenwood. You come earlier’n you always do. We thought we could do it ‘fore you come. We jest done it t’ smoke out Bill ‘n Hairy...they always throws fits over nothin’, ‘n...”

  “Forgiven this time, boys,...but no more of it, please. You see, that caused us all inconvenience. Anybody can play a practical joke. It doesn’t take brains to plan them. Hurry, Homer, put those things back before your father finds out.”

  That was the last of such jokes. It is true that I would like to stuff chimneys and smoke certain people out. But I do not do it. I manage to restrain myself that much. I suppose it may end in my doing worse. I hate practical joking.

  AN ADVERTISEMENT I saw in the Boston Journal of Education offered a box of tooth paste to each school writing to the address given. It does no harm to say that it was Colgate’s. I sent for it, and prepared my children for instructions in its use by telling them all to bring their toothbrushes on a certain day. I took along a gray granite washbasin, a tumbler, and my own toothbrush.

  Standing before the class, I commanded all toothbrushes to be lifted as mine, and was rewarded by the appearance of an appallingly black toothbrush, with an ancient, yellow, bone handle, clutched in the fingers of the yellow-haired Emily.

  “Toothbrushes,” I reminded my pupils gently, still conscious of that alarming black brush.

  “Ain’t none of us got none,” from Bernard. “Tole Dad, ‘n he says we gotta do as he done...did...do without none. He says he’s kep’ his teeth chawin’ tobacco.”

  You can’t pass open judgment on the habits of parents. I thought for a second. “When you go home, I want you to take a salt sack....How many of you can get a salt sack for your own?” (All hands up.) “Boil it every day for a few minutes, and you may take this sack, put on it the paste I shall now distribute, and rub your teeth with it at least once a day.”

  Emily was bursting to tell me: “I got a toothbrush.” (She waved the black-stubbled brush.) “Ma found it in the yard of the farm we jest rented. Someun musta scrubbed their teeth there before we come. Ma was cleanin’ the stove with it, ‘n I says you says I gotta have it fer m’ teeth, ‘n...”

  Her little sister Eda broke in, “She says we kin both use it...it’s mine, too!”

  “I tell you what you do,” I said to the two little girls. “That’s not the kind of brush I meant, so you give it back to your mother. Besides, it will be much more fun to rub your teeth the way the other children do.”

  How proud they were of those individual tubes! (A big fat one for Teacher!) It was with some consternation that I saw them go, a tube gripped lovingly in each hand. I was afraid they might end by eating the contents for its flavor. They had so few treats.

  The phonograph fund was not growing fast enough to make music accessible to these pupils in the weathered old school-house. We had to have money. I could give a little, but we needed more than I could give. I could lend more, but who was to pay me back? The boys and I consulted together. The result was a platform in front of the ragged blackboard, made from lumber borrowed from Mr. Parish, whose little daughter Florence and son Hector were in my school. The boys also made a scarecrow under my instructions, building it of straw and placing on its head a battered hat, contributed by Mike Gogenslide by request. Mike was not insulted when the boys told him they wanted the worst hat in the district and that he was wearing it. They said the teacher wanted it. Off came the hat. Mike always liked me, in a perfectly silent way; I could feel it. He replaced the battered hat with one which made the boys sorry the scarecrow had not been built with two heads. They told me about it, showing, always, a fund of exceptional humor.

  Around the neck of the scarecrow were two strings, one tied to a pencil, one to a subscription paper; and a legend, in large letters, was blazoned on his breast:

  HELP ME TO HELP THE SCHOOL TO GET A PHONOGRAPH

  Keith stuck an old pipe in our scarecrow’s mouth, watching with dancing eyes the horrified reaction of the other pupils, whose gaze turned at once to see what Teacher would think of this last prank. The hygiene book said terrible things about tobacco, and Teacher was compelled to teach it, as teachers are compelled to teach it throughout this good old United States now; and the result now, as then, is that the men go right on smoking, and also the women, if they care to do so.

  Education does not form peoples’ habits. How blind we are when we expect such a thing! All that education worthy of the name can do is to help people to find out what they want to know—what is necessary for their well-being that they cannot get otherwise. Habits are made through admiration of an example. We should have learned that through the failure of the Eighteenth Amendment. We shall fail as badly with repeal unless we have enough splendid men and women to set the right example, whatever that may be.

  I knew my boys were already smoking and chewing. The older ones, I mean. They had been doing it for years. Their fathers had set the example. I was only a woman. My opinion carried weight, but boys need men to follow. And there was no fine, un-smoking, un-chewing male to change a habit fastened upon those boys like riveted iron. No matter what I felt about it, there was nothing I could do except say, “Boys, scientists have discovered these facts with regard to tobacco.” That’s all. My example meant nothing.

  We had our little entertainment, the first ever given in the district—“The first time we ever come t’gither under one roof,” as the enthusiastic Eb Hall, my future Mormon friend, expressed it. None of his children were in my school, all being too young.

  I trained the children for exhibition by means of class work, which was a logical thing to do, for no class has any right to existence unless it leads to some form of activity connected with the child’s actual life. I invited the Milner school to be present, and they came in a delighted body. After the program we staged a potato-passing contest which filled the old school-house with shouts of laughter. There was my school and Milner’s school, with its teacher and one trustee, keeper of the livery-stable. The two schools faced each other, a bushel basket at each end of the facing rows, and from the full basket to the other went the potatoes, each school trying to fill its end basket first.

  The parents were excited spectators. “Go it, Florence!...Look out, Bill!...Homer! Homer! quick! quick!...Mary Jones, there....Here, that ain’t no fair!...Good fer Milner!...By jiminy, Milner gotcha that time!...Bernard! Bernard!...Look what you doin’, Hairy!...Hurrah for Milner!” Faces, young and old, flushing with excitement, and the great requisite of all enjoyment, complete forgetfulness of self. Had they paid twenty-five dollars a seat; had it been in Soldiers’ Field; had it been a contest between famous teams, no greater pleasure could have been experienced. It was the first sport these children had ever known, their proud parents watching and urging them on.

  The same lanterns that had lighted their evening milking now hung on nails around the bare board walls. The women had brought pumpkin pies, some cheap brand of coffee, sandwiches of pork. Charley had provided our gasoline stove for making the coffee.

  Before the lunch came the program, and it was a moment of heart-bursting emotion for those parents when their children stood on that unpainted plank platform and spoke or sang. They themselves had never done anything of the kind, nor had they ever seen anything like it done. These children, who had just been bossed about, scolded for not watering the hogs right, cautioned about shutting the barn door tight on Fanny because we don’t want her calf to come while she’s out in the storm, told not to forget to close the outdoor cellar against freezing—these children were doing things their parents knew they could not possibly do themselves. Pride! Pride made up of smiles, and very close to tears—pride in offspring.

  Everybody munching pie or sandwiches and drinking steaming coffee. Teacher flitting here and there, using
her big chance to get acquainted with parents and put in a word now and then that will make things smoother for a misunderstood child. Eph Parish making shushings to everyone by hammering on a desk with a knife.

  “Hey! Folks! Eb Hall here was jes’ a-sayin’ that we-uns has never been under one roof t’gither before. I move you Mrs. Greenwood organize us into a Lit’ry Society, so’s we kin have this here doin’s come often. They used to have lit’ry societies out east in Nebrasky, where I come from, when I was a kid. All in favor say ‘I!’”

  There was a shout. He forgot to put the “No.” I formed the organization then. Guy Raine, husband of a woman who could play the harmonica like a man, was elected president, and his son Arthur, secretary. I went Eph Parish one better. I who was not even a Christian, but with the untrusting faith in God of a Christian—I organized the first Sunday-school the district ever had. In doing this I know I exhibited only the ever-ready impulse of humanity to seek safety in conventional forms. I felt it would mean more social life. And when the phonograph came...

  All the farmers had signed the paper, promising the payment of substantial sums, so I knew I was safe in sending enough of my own earnings to get the phonograph at once. When it arrived, the farmers and their families came for miles around, driving through the bitter, biting cold in wagons bedded with straw, old quilts drawn over the family, the driver muffled to the eyes.

  I had sent for the best of records, but along with them some childish game records, such as “Round and Round the Village” and “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” songs passed down through generations of children, beginning with whom nobody knows. Caruso, Melba, the great symphony orchestras, all performed for us sagebrush folks, there in the little old school-house.

  There is a painting called “The Power of Music”...a sophisticated group, faces expressing every degree of tragedy and resignation, a red-haired, scarlet-gowned woman the dramatic center. It moves me deeply, that picture. In my mind, never yet painted, is another even more striking, entitled the same: in the rough, brown-planked school-house, sitting two to a seat, a baby on each desk, my work-worn, shabby farmers and their wives; children standing in aisles; the big boys lounging against the walls; every face intent; not a sound except the music from that morning-glory horn. These farm people had felt so much; had suffered so much in silence; had suppressed so much of joyous desire; had been so isolated from the world—this music, austere, classical, though it was, voiced the emotions of their hearts. For the ordinary city man the trashy, popular tunes—he has never lived with hunger, cold, pain, and death. It takes deep hearts to love deep music.