Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  And we are not fresh for those final Olympic tasks of serving, for while Hen’s wife was down at the canal carrying water, or pulling it up out of the cistern, or pumping it, in whichever case the water situation might be, I have been fighting flies. The ceilings of all the rooms have been black with them, although early that morning Charley has made the circuit of the house, burning flies on the shingled walls, under eaves, and in corners. If we have managed to get fly-powder, just before the thresher stops for noon, I puff it into the air from the little can with the tube nose.

  I must go out-of-doors with Hen’s wife while the flies are dying, or I shall be suffocated. But there is plenty for me to do. I drag a galvanized tub near the cistern, place buckets there, also wash-basins and any pans that can be used. I place a pile of towels beside these. The towels are made from beet-seed sacks. Bars of laundry soap are scattered about.

  Again I am in the house. Talk about the Massacre of the Innocents...millions of dead flies cover everything. I had laid papers over the table, over kettles, over pies, over everything that might be reached by flies or powder. And these I gather, carefully, to burn. I need not detail the course of my fly-collecting. One hole of the kitchen range receives dustpanful after dustpanful of the slaughtered innocents.

  And now Hen Turner’s wife and I are rushing the steaming food onto the table while the men throw water into their faces. There is always a logical reason for a traditional act. I wonder why all farmers wash by softening the dirt a little with some strong soap, loosening it a little more with water dashed upward in great handfuls, and wiping off the resulting gummy, sweaty mud on the towels. I always washed that mountain of filthy towels in the fatalistic humor that what had to be had to be.

  The first tableful are seated, are passing the bread, pickles, preserves, vegetables, meat, everything at the same time, with crosscurrents that manage not to collide, while Hen Turner’s wife is pouring coffee for all the coffee-drinkers, and milk for all the milk-drinkers, and water for all the water-drinkers, and coffee, milk, and water for the coffee, milk, and water drinkers, and hot water with a little milk in it for Farmer Stillton. I am already refilling dishes—more hot rolls, more meat, more of everything. The second table is lolling in the shade of the house, listening to the ditch-riders and the agents for This and That Company.

  “And I sez t’ him, sez I...now, looky-here, Sam Muckleberry, I sez, sez I...”

  “What the Goverment oughta do...”

  “My idee is that rust on wheat is caused by...”

  “And this is the best two-way plow you ever...”

  We women carry off the vegetables and meat and set the pie tins, on china plates, all over the table. The men slide their knives under the slices and thus transfer them to their dinner plates, which they have cleaned with crusts of bread, consuming the crusts afterwards. Sometimes they sample every pie; sometimes, like Eb Hall, they fasten affectionate eyes on one certain pie, eating slice after slice. Eb’s favorite was raisin; Old Man Babcock’s was fresh-prune. Knowing this, I was always careful to see that there was a prune pie in front of Babcock and a raisin pie in front of Eb. I knew those pies would never be allowed to ramble.

  Hen’s wife apparently lived on nothing; a few bites sufficed, and she was out in the kitchen scraping dishes. I had endured too much to rest so briefly; besides, I had a week’s meals, or perhaps more, to work on in just this same frantic manner. I must let down while I could let down. So I always got a book and began reading, this operation usually ending with a scribbling spree. Poor they were, no doubt, but on scraps of paper, on cracker boxes, on fly-leaves, there were written down those verses of mine, born in the midst of the heavy labor of a sagebrush farm.

  I am not long at this, but I have rested hard while I was at it. Soon Hen’s wife and I are in the midst cleaning up. We scrape, and I put away, and then we wash and wipe, and I sweep, and pretty soon there is calm and order in the farm-house, and the flies are beginning to gather from nowhere for the evening meal.

  Hen’s wife goes home. I know what I am to serve, unaided, at night. I go to look over the field, and I am smothered by affectionate children and dogs. Shafts of sunlight come down to earth like Jacob’s ladder, piercing a black storm-cloud. Red clover grows along the sides of the fields, with leaves that must have been planned to discountenance an atheist.

  The best part of threshing is the very tip of the tail of the last day, when you see the monster and its attendant dragon crawling down the road to another farm. You can never know what it is to be really light-hearted and free until you have endured the galley-slavery of a week or two of cooking for threshers. I did not take it hard only because I was formerly a soft city woman. Mrs. Asper, my neighbor at some distance, has complained to me, almost in tears, of having threshers remain when she was so worn out with them she felt she could endure no more. Of course, a woman like Mrs. Epperson, who had cooked for the road-workers weeks on end, would never turn a hair or lose a wink of sleep. There is genius in cooking for threshers as well as in composing symphonic music.

  But I did pretty well, considering everything. I really made a success of it. It was a big job, and I did as well as any of the born farm women. My Waterloo came through another matter, a small one, as is so often the case. When Napoleon fell asleep on his horse at Waterloo, it must have been because he considered the occasion not of sufficient importance to keep him awake.

  I WAS NOT DECEIVED concerning my point of failure. It caused me great humiliation. Yet I was nor to blame, for I had wanted to learn to milk a cow. But Charley had said, “No. I don’t want you to learn. Then I won’t be staying in town and leaving it for you to do. I couldn’t trust myself to come home if I knew you could milk. No man could.”

  It was indeed a very curious matter that nearly all our sagebrush men had some affliction of the wrists, or fingers, or stomach, or what-not, that made it impossible for them to milk, so, of course, their women did the milking. Mrs. Jean was the exception. But then, her husband was the workin’est fool.

  Charley was on the board of directors of the Water Company, and there came a time at last when he was forced to stay overnight in Jerome. At that time we had only one fresh cow, but that cow was so freshly fresh that when she was not milked at night, by morning her bag was filled to bursting. So it was at the time I decided I must milk her, since there was not a man on the ranch, our farm hands being in Twin Falls. They had gone that morning, in their fine car, to attend a grand parade of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

  Usually there was a whole family of Russian-Germans thinning our sugar-beets, all barefooted, even to the kind old mother, a great, bulging sack of a woman, tied in the middle with a string which had disappeared in the line of contact between her voluminous breasts and belly. I suppose there are more polite ways of saying this, but in her full-gathered old gray dress she suggested simply the clean, straightforward words I have used, with neither obscene nor sensual associations. This family always came to work in their fine car, and today they were resting between thinnings, having been transported from our fields the night before in the aforesaid fine car. Which makes it pertinent to observe that Charley had crawled to Jerome in our poor, beloved, old second-hand Ford, Sagebrush Liz, the only car we were ever able to afford, and perhaps, in view of our mortgages, we had no right even to her.

  Our freshly fresh cow that morning had been bawling at the living-room window, each bawl ending in a cow-sized screech. A cow purring a cow-sized purr might be pleasant enough, but a cow bawling and screeching a cow-sized bawl and screech was simply demoralizing. I did not think the cow was dying of bloat, for her teats were actually dripping milk. When I saw that she could not turn off the taps, I thought even I might milk her.

  As I seated myself on a battered galvanized bucket beside her, she turned a suspicious gaze upon me. Nervously apprehensive of that gaze, I began signaling the milk-station by pulling on her teats. When I had seen Charley milking, it looked so simple. Charley signaled
with a pull now and then, and the cow obligingly flowed out the milk in a stiff stream. I pictured myself carrying into the house a full milk-pail. I should be so proud to tell the Baron how I had milked.

  When that cow stood at the window and bawled and yelled and screeched, the milk was dripping from her teats. Now that I had taken the trouble to sit there on that uncomfortable galvanized bucket, jerking with all my might on teat after teat, not even a drop came out. I consider that one of the miracles. For surely there are miracles of not doing, as well as of doing.

  I sat still and looked at the cow and thought, and the cow stood still and looked at me and thought. I don’t know what the cow thought, but I suspect it was some of that talk about God that the farmer had said to her at other times—that talk in which there were a lot of “damns.” What I was thinking was that I must be on the wrong side of the cow. I had observed every other rule I knew; I had seated myself on the bucket, had spoken tender words of reassurance, had given competent jerks to her teats, and after all nothing had happened, except that the cow had stopped bawling and yelling and screeching and was holding the thought that no milk was in her bag, so that not by any chance should she once forget and drop a single drop for me. It was undoubtedly because I was on her wrong side.

  I had heard Eb Hall say that if you got on the wrong side of the cow, she would not let down her milk. Funny thing about a cow that she has to be so particular about where you sit to milk her.

  It is a wonder she has not been driven out of business long ago by some kind of five-and-ten cow that will let you sit anywhere you please and milk her, maybe by telephone. I won’t go so far as to say by radio, because I should not blame any cow for holding back her milk while hearing some of the things I have had forced on me over the air.

  What should I do? I could try the other side, but I had also overheard the threat that if you get on the wrong side of a cow, she will kick over the milk-pail. When I had milked a bucket full, I did not want to risk that catastrophe. There was no use looking in the dictionary, or the Bible, or the doctor book, to find out which side you should elect to get the right milking side of a cow. Ah, but there was the school-teacher!

  Mrs. Quackenbos was a large and ingratiating woman, her education for teaching consisting in being a large and ingratiating woman, and all her pupils learned from her was a large and ingratiating blank. But she did know more than Mrs. Greenwood about certain parts of farming. She had milked cows and knew on which side to sit. I sent a note to her, asking very humbly on which side of a cow you sit to induce her to let her milk down.

  My note was read by Mrs. Quackenbos to her roomful of pupils, to be met by a burst of hilarious laughter. Those farm children had not known that there was any one in the world so imbecile as not to have been born with the knowledge of which is the right side of a cow to sit on. Yes, I have avoided saying it, but the technical term is, “the right side of a cow to sit on.” And now let grammarians tear their hair in anguish. Lots they know about the right side of a cow to sit on.

  A learned youth—learned in the right side of a cow to sit on—came up the hill from the school-house...no, he was not bearing a banner with a strange device, Excelsior! though I very nearly stumbled into saying that. He was smothering a well-developed snicker under a solemn, dumb expression. He had come to milk my cow, and he did it. That ornery cow turned her head and took one look at him, and there he was in ragged overalls and an old, ragged coat, a horrible cap forcing his ears forward and out, like Hen Turner’s, with freckles as large as pond-lily pads, while I...Yet down came the milk in several steady streams at once, swish-swish-swish-swish....

  IT IS TRUE that I organized the first Sunday-school in our district, and none of our good sagebrush folks suspected that I was not even a Christian at that time. I was an average deist. I believed there was a God, but I thought he was the old, bearded Jehovah who licked his lips over his successful vengeances, as though it were anything for God to be tickled about that he could lambaste poor ineffectual man. I had no real faith in a loving God. I had no real faith in any kind of God. I was like the average churcher: I believed, feared, hoped, desired, rebelled, complained, but I did not trust. Like Peter of old, who denied his Lord and yet I would found a church in his honor, I founded a Sunday-school.

  I trust it did no harm, though there was a period a long time later when it ran true to form and was intolerant of a brother Sunday-school because it was called Mormon. Churches and Sunday-schools are powerful influences for good if they are powerful influences for good, but ex officio they can be as powerful an influence for intolerance and bigotry.

  When one of Jesus’ disciples asked his will, he repeated over and over again, “Feed my sheep! Feed my lambs!” and since he always healed the body as well as the soul, I believe he meant it physically as well as spiritually. So long as there is a hungry person in the world, worthy or, particularly, unworthy, the Sunday-schools and churches stand arraigned. “Feed my lambs! Feed my black lambs as well as my white lambs! I came not to feed the full, but the empty; not to reward the safe, but to save the sinner from himself.”

  I founded the Literary Society, and I think it may have saved a few sinners from themselves, for we often had good, innocent laughter together, and there is more soul-saving in good, innocent laughter laughed together than in all your creeds. For there is brotherly love in generous, understanding laughter. One of my firmest beliefs is in a God with a sense of humor; otherwise He must be inferior to His own creation, and that, of course, is impossible. Oh, my dear, understanding, humorous, loving God!

  I am sure those sagebrush folks would have founded all the societies they needed without my help or doubtful leadership. Leaders are a sort of nuisance, anyhow. I am much in doubt as to the good results of most of the world’s crusades for which martyrs have died. A man or a woman who acts a true friend to some unfortunate being, right where he or she is by reason of fate, is probably doing all there is to do in this world. Civilization? Let me answer: Civilization is that state which underscores the superfluous. Mercy? Love? These are not the prerogatives of any race, society, or financial condition.

  The organization that did the most good in our community was not founded by me, nor was I even a member, though I was asked to join. It was planned and put into operation by Mrs. Dan Jean, and it bore, in the beginning, the unique and quaint name of the Ladies Fancywork Improvement Club. I have told you about this before. I repeat it because it did more practical good than the Sunday-school, the Literary Society, and the Grange, all put together.

  There was nothing to say against the Grange. I helped organize that, and I was its first Lecturer. When I heard the title of my office, I sorta hoped it was some kinda talking job in which I could talk all I wanted to and nobody could get away. It turned out to be almost as interesting. I was the Grange entertainment programmer, and, oh, how I love to tell people what they must do! While I was on that job, everybody did something. Those who wouldn’t sing, or speak, or play, or stand on their heads, or what-not (it mattered not that they couldn’t) either had to provide coffee for the Grange or cake, pie, or sandwiches. Coffee was masculine, the rest feminine. Believe me, folks, there was always something doing while I ran the Grange entertainment program.

  Charley gave our Grange the name Frontier. I liked that. But in the voting it ran neck and neck with such original names as Shamrock, Four-Leaf Clover, Buckeye, Pleasant View, and What-not. Well, no; to be truthful, What-not was not advanced, but I am still surprised that it wasn’t. There was great electioneering back and forth, Four-Leaf Clover lobbies, and Shamrock lobbies, and Buckeye lobbies, and What-not...I mean, and other lobbies forming in little groups all over the big room, made by folding back the doors between the Upper Grades and the Primary. That ungrateful cow I told you about performed a miracle of not doing. When Charley and Jack Overdonk and I secured the name Frontier for our Grange, we performed a miracle of doing.

  Of course, the sagebrush folks could not be blamed for o
pposing the name Frontier, for it meant practically nothing to them, always being pronounced “Front-ear”; and if they had any bewildered idea of why Charley had selected it, their actual response to it was a vague visualization of some repugnant physiognomy with a monstrous ear located in frontal position, probably as nasal substitute—the Last Front-ear.

  Jack was the first Master of Frontier Grange, and a handsome figure he made up in front there, after he had arrived around eleven P. M. Jack was still keeping banking hours on the farm, his wife taking up the slack by getting up that much earlier. One or the other of every married couple usually has to dedicate his or her life to taking up the slack left loose by the other partner.

  The Baron was Overseer. My mind has always been hazy about the office of Grange Overseer. All I can recognize is that he oversees the backs of people’s heads, as he has a position at the back of the room opposite to the Grange Master’s position at the front. I have an idea that if the subconscious of the Grange were analyzed, it would be found that the Overseer was originated out of the suspicions of farmers for each other. The Grange Overseer can see whether there are any irrigation spades sticking out of hind pockets, for many a farmer kills his neighbor with a spade each watering season, when the two meet at a head-gate where gunny-sacks are found turning the water where it has no right to be. My attention was often distracted in Sunday-school by my irresistible impulse during hymn-singing to listen with unreligious fascination to the loud bellowings of Old Man Babcock and Baldy Parsons, who were in the habit of stealing our water. Sometimes it seemed to me that even our dear, forgiving Father in Heaven might smile a little sardonically, knowing how the night before the water was diverted with weeds or gunny-sacks.