The Egg and I

by Betty Macdonald

  I repeated again firmly, “I know Bob won’t have time to help with the haying.”

  “Well, thatth too bad,” said Paw. “But don’t forgit to come to the thupper.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “What time?”

  “Oh, ’bout four-thirty,” said Paw. “And by the way, everybody ith bringin’ a little somthin’ to the party. You know thort of picnic thtyle.”

  “I’ll bring the birthday cake,” I said, which evidently satisfied Paw for he and Elwin took their egg mash and left. (They came up again in September to solicit help with that same hay.)

  I was not an expert cake maker but decided to make up in size what it would undoubtedly lack in quality. None of my recipe books contained any directions for anything over two layers so I doubled and tripled and before evening I had the great heavy square foundation layer done.

  The next day dawned hazy but warm—a perfect day for a party and a perfect morning to bake the rest of the cake, which by noon was finished and frosted pink, white and blue. It was poisonous but festive looking, and as a final corny touch I lettered HAPPY BIRTHDAY on one side in red cinnamon drops and stuck an American flag on the top. Bob drove to the Crossroads for a pair of silk stockings and a birthday card and on the way back picked up Birdie to stay with the baby. At four o’clock on the dot we loaded the cake and set off. The farther down the mountain we drove the hotter it grew until, by the time we turned into Kettles’ yard, it was stifling. The yard was seething with cars, as all of the fifteen children, their husbands, wives, children and in-laws were there. Mrs. Kettle was bright-eyed in a clean pink housedress which was missing the top two buttons in the front so that as she greeted us I noticed that her large white breasts bobbed to the surface like dumplings in a stew. I handed her our present and she kissed me, unwrapped the package and said, “Well thank God, I don’t have to wear them damn lizzle stockins no more.”

  She directed me to put the cake on the front porch where we were to eat. I carried it through the dark front hall and out the never used front door and set it with a thump on the long table of boards on saw horses which had been set up and covered with a pink crepe paper tablecloth anchored with rocks. Almost all of the chicken droppings had been scraped from the floor and railing and the lilac bushes cast cool shadows across the table. Two of the flypaper curls had been suspended from the ceiling and already they were dotted with flies and swayed and quivered as more hit and stuck. The little flag on my cake drooped as the icing grew warm and soft and the HAPPY BIRTHDAY seemed about to slide off at one end, so I moved it farther into the shade before returning to the hot kitchen and the mobs of guests. As I left the porch I noted that, whether we had counted on it or not, the outhouse was going to be noticeably present at supper; so I suggested when I went to the kitchen that someone put up some sort of temporary door across its front. Mrs. Kettle said, “It’s a good idea but I don’t think you’ll get any of the men to do it for you. Go shout at ’em, they’re on the back porch.”

  I shouted, but the men were busy drinking blackberry wine, moonshine, dandelion wine and beer and comparing notes on guns and hunting, and the only answer I got to my request was a look of annoyance at my interruption from Bob. We women drank coffee while we made potato salad, cut the meatloaf, opened pickles and sliced bread. It was stifling in the crowded kitchen but we had to build up the fire to bake the rolls and boil the fresh coffee. I opened the door to the parlor, hoping to release a cross current of air, but the children immediately crowded into this new area, so Mrs. Kettle got up, firmly shooed them out and locked the door. The sanctity of the parlor was not threatened even on her birthday. The children raced from the kitchen through the hall out the front door, off the porch, around the house, up on the back porch and through the kitchen again. They dodged under hot platters, stuck their fingers in the jam and got whacked, rolled on the floor with the dogs, came to get their panties unbuttoned or buttoned, and tattled. The big rocker by the stove held a succession of mothers suckling babies, while the other chairs supported the ample behinds of helpers and cooks. The talk was about sex, logging, sex, cooking, sex, sewing, sex, salaries, sex, fits, and just plain sex. Every four letter word I had ever heard and many I had never heard were employed singly and in unusual combinations. In anger or only slight irritation the children were called such unbelievably filthy names, that in comparison “dirty little bugger,” “Christly sonofabitch” and “stinking bastard” seemed terms of affection and endearment. Never have I encountered a group that needed “heart medicine” more, unless perhaps it was the men who, Bob told me, when they weren’t slipping from the porch to siphon gas or lift any loose tools, radiator caps, or gearshift knobs from each other’s cars, were loudly relating incidents to exhibit their sex prowess either before or after marriage. Mrs. Kettle laughed occasionally but she was plainly embarrassed, as was I. We cut up the potatoes and hard-boiled eggs and talked about canning and were both very relieved when the enormous granite coffee pot finally began to boil and it was time to set the table and carry out the food.

  Everyone on the back porch was by that time quite drunk and their voices had become loud and a little quarrelsome. A small boy, a little bully who had been causing a great deal of unhappiness among the younger children, came screaming up from the barnyard where he had been chased but unfortunately not eaten by an old sow. Maw sent Elwin to fetch Mr. Kettle from the barn and we all filed out to the porch for supper.

  When everyone was seated, I suggested that we sing Happy Birthday. This was a mistake, I realized too late, for they followed Happy Birthday with Show Me The Way to Go Home and the dirty version of Little Red Wing. Maw interrupted this last by banging on the table with her fork and demanding quiet. Everyone cheered and said, “At’s teliin’ ’em Maw!” and began passing food. Elwin had said that Paw would be right up, but we were well into the ice cream before he finally appeared. To protect him from the flies he had put on and pulled far down over his eyes, a black straw hat of Mrs. Kettle’s. From its crown bobbed a large pink rose. To shield him from draughts he had thrust his arms into a jade green knitted coat dress with a full pleated skirt. The skirt must have interfered with the milking for he had taken a deep hem in it with horse blanket pins, giving the effect of a ballet skirt. He also wore a black work shirt, dungarees, and hip boots and was smoking a cigar. Choking in an effort to control my laughter until the others had seen the joke, I glanced at Bob, but he shook his head at me warningly. Amazed, I looked around the table—not one soul seemed to think there was anything unusual in Paw’s dress. He clumped around the table, smiling happily at everyone, climbed into the chair beside Mrs. Kettle by swinging one manurey boot carelessly over that end of the table, and she said only, “You’ve took so long with the milking your coffee’s cold, Paw. Helen, this here’s the knitted dress Myrt sent me from New York. Ugly color ain’t it?”

  After supper the men returned to the back porch, we women put the food away and washed the dishes, and Bob and I left just as a sizable fight started over who had stolen what from whose car. The cake was a great success.

  We seldom went to the movies for two very sound reasons: 1. It meant driving from seventy to one hundred miles. 2. We had to get up at four o’clock the next morning. In addition to these, Bob complained that his legs were too long for comfort in any theatre seat; he always slept through everything but the news; and I became so biased that no matter how melodramatic the plot, I watched only to see if the heroine did any work or if she seemed to have all of the conveniences of modern life. If she didn’t work and seemed to have plenty of opportunity to take big hot steamy fragrant baths, I lost all interest in the plot. Under such circumstances who gave a damn who got the man.

  I will go to a fair any time. A fair to me is the ultimate in entertainment. Something of interest for everyone, all the time in the world to enjoy it, and so many delightful smells—popcorn, coffee, molasses candy and wet sawdust. For years our family had made an all-day visit to the Western Washington Fair
at Puyallup but we treated the trip purely as entertainment. We had no active part in it and we paid no attention to prize ribbons other than in the flower department where Mother forced us to wait while she bought bulbs and seeds.

  I entered our County Fair with such an entirely different viewpoint that it was as if I had never been to a fair before. The County Fair was held near Town in late September. Town was in an odd little dry belt which meandered through that soaking wet country so there was never any danger of the fair being spoiled by rain, as it so often was at Puyallup, and by the opening day the dust was ankle deep and had to be hosed down every morning giving a pleasant spring-rain smell to pathways. We attended the fair in true farmer style. I packed dozens of diapers, several bottles, blankets and pillows so the baby could take a nap in the truck, mosquito netting to keep off the flies, extra old shoes for the trip through the animal pens, and we were on the highway by eight in the morning.

  It was chilly and foggy in the mountains, but Town was flooded with bright sunshine and whipped by salty breezes. The water was deep blue and lacy with whitecaps, the mountains were pale blue and white with sharp outlines, the hills were soft golden yellow and the old red courthouse gazed down on the town with the dignity and benignancy of a cathedral. Despite the early hour there were many other cars and trucks on the road and when we turned into the fairgrounds we found as much activity as though it were late afternoon. We parked the truck under a large Balm of Gilead tree near the restaurant, I divested Anne of her knitted leggings, put on my old shoes and we were ready. The first thing, of course, was to have a cup of coffee and some fresh homemade doughnuts. At stools along the counter on either side of us were other farmers and their wives and children. The other babies were being given sips of coffee and bites of the hot greasy doughnuts and I felt hard and niggardly as I ate and drank with Anne’s round blue eyes following each sip and bite like a little puppy. After the coffee we went to the poultry show—of course, we thought that some of the White Leghorns that had won blue ribbons weren’t a bit better than our own hens. Bob was much interested in the Australorps—black chickens which were supposed to lay as well as the White Leghorn and yet be as fine a table bird as the Rhode Island Red or Barred Rock. It sounded too good to be true but the farmer who exhibited swore that they were the most remarkable discovery since electricity. From the poultry houses we went to the pig pens which were more pleasant early in the morning; then to the sheep, goats and rabbits. By this time Anne was getting sleepy so I took her back to the car and left Bob with instructions to meet me at the restaurant at noon. I fastened Anne to the seat of the car with a blanket under and over her and pinned to the upholstery, stretched the mosquito netting from the back of the seat to the steering wheel and she immediately and obligingly went to sleep. I spent the rest of the morning in the canning and fancywork exhibits—I felt a surge of pride when I saw that Birdie Hicks had won blue ribbons on all of her canning and that Mrs. Kettle’s quilts were prominently displayed. There were some really beautiful hooked and braided rugs and some perfectly hideous ones made of gunny sacks fringed and coated with yarn forced through the mesh and tied in knots. I remember seeing instructions for these in one of the farm magazines. There was a pen and ink drawing of the rug, showing it with a nap of about eight inches. Underneath it said “There is beauty in even the common grain sack.” There is, too, but not when it has been disfigured with yarny knots. There were other ingenious uses for everyday objects. There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, “An inexpensive doorstop”—Ethalynne Weatherby. I made a mental note to ask someone if that was “our Mrs. Weatherby.” There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, clothespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtain hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people.

  23

  Put Out That Match!

  EVEN with the continual rain, July, August, September and even October were bad fire months in the mountains. If you were unfortunate enough to live on a ranch near the Kettles, any month was dangerous. It was said that the Kettles set the original peat fires in the valleys and that one summer, Paw, to save himself the effort of mowing the lawn, set fire to the grass and burned off the front porch. The Kettles burned brush any old time of year and if the brush fire got away from them and burned five or ten acres of someone’s timber, that was too bad.

  In the Northwest, particularly in regions near the salt water, the underbrush is rank and grows with tropical rapidity. Salmon berry bushes, wild syringa, thimble berry and alder grow six to ten feet in a season and make land clearing a yearly task. When nothing is done to keep back this underbrush, the old canes remain tinder dry underneath and in between the new growth. This makes danger from fire a perennial thing.

  It was late October of the second year when Elwin Kettle drove excitedly into our yard one morning to tell us that their barn was on fire. He said, “Paw filled the hay mow with wet hay and the darned stuff’s combusted spontaneous. The barn’s burnin’ and it’s set the brush in the ravine on fire, too. Maw said to warn you that it’ll probably come up this way because the wind’s from the south.” I was frightened and ran out to the chicken house to fetch Bob. Bob said, “Oh, I don’t think it will amount to anything,” but he took the truck and followed Elwin back to the ranch. Bob did not return until noon. When he did come home he was black from head to foot and very angry. He said that he was quite sure Paw had set the barn on fire to solve the manure situation; that the barn had burned, but the fire had left the Kettle ranch and was sweeping up the draw with terrible velocity.

  He said that if the fire crossed the road, our ranch would go. I asked if the Kettles were helping fight the fire and Bob said, “They helped only as long as the fire was on their land. The minute it crossed their boundary fence they went back to the house on the pretext of protecting the house and outbuildings. When I went to get the truck I saw them all on the back porch, drinking home brew and laughing and talking.”

  Bob told me to spend the afternoon hosing off our roof and soaking the dry orchard grass and preparing to feed the fire fighters. He left to get help.

  All afternoon cars chugged up our road and then scooted down toward the Kettles’. Bob had spread the alarm and the farmers were answering the call for help. I learned later that Bob had gone even farther—he had asked Maxwell Ford Jefferson, the moonshiner, to help and Jeff passed the word on to all his good customers. I made gallons of coffee and hundreds of sandwiches and at about four the fighters began filing wearily in, black faced and dirty. They ate sandwiches, drank coffee, and cursed the Kettles. The smoke rolled up the draw and obscured the sun and stung my eyes while I put out the lanterns and fed the chickens. Each batch of fighters brought more frightening news. “The fire was almost to the road in several places.” “The wind was getting stronger.” “Once the fire hit the timber on our place we would have to run for our lives.”

  About seven o’clock Max Jefferson knocked at the back door. He was all alone. He said in his soft liquidy voice, “Just thought I’d drop up and tell you not to worry, honey. I’ve got the biggest bunch of drunkards in the United States out fightin’ that fire ’cause they think my still’s up this away.” Jeff was a tall, tobacco-colored, lithe man with old world courtesy of manner, a southern drawl and light yellow eyes which saw in the dark and spotted every exit in a room before he crossed the threshold. He drank his coffee and ate his sandwiches, tilted back in a kitchen chair, occasionally fingering the gun in his coat pocket and flas
hing his big white teeth. After he had finished his coffee he said he had something for me in his car and went out and brought in a ten gallon keg of whiskey. He set it down carefully in the middle of the kitchen. “That theah is fine whiskey,” he said. “It’s been hangin’ in a tree and should be smooth as oil now.” Before I could thank him he had slipped out the door and was gone.

  I put the baby to bed, then went out to the front porch to watch the fire. It was only about two city blocks from the house and the snapping and crackling were fearful sounds. The fire fighters reported that they had kept it out of the heavy timber down by the water pump and that the wind was dying down. I wandered aimlessly around after each batch of fighters had eaten and left, trying to choose what I would take in case we had to run for it. It narrowed down finally to the baby, the keg of whiskey and the animals. I put my sorority pin and my high school graduation ring in my purse, my silver in the didy bag and we were ready.

  About eight o’clock Mrs. Hicks arrived with two chocolate cakes, two pounds of butter and two quarts of cream. The smoke had grown heavier with the lessening of the wind, but by closing all of the doors and windows I was able to keep most of it out of the house. A group of fighters arrived simultaneously with Mrs. Hicks and we had first to feed them before we could talk. Then we poured out cups of coffee and sank down to discuss the fire. I noticed with pleasure that in the excitement Mrs. Hicks had pulled the keg of whiskey over by the stove, had placed a pillow on it and was sitting there primly drinking her coffee.