A Year Down Yonder Page 4

  You never saw a more surprised woman in your life. “Cold?” she said. “It doesn’t get cold anymore. The climate’s changed. When I was a girl, we had to walk in our sleep to keep from freezing to death.”

  One morning after a hard frost, Grandma stood at the foot of the stairs, banging a spoon against a pan, her wake-up call.

  When I came into the kitchen, dressed in three layers, she was pouring batter on the waffle iron, and coffee perked. She let me drink coffee. The scent of her cooking breakfasts was to follow me through life. But I was sulky that morning.

  “Grandma, what am I doing up at the crack of dawn? There’s no school today.”

  She turned to give me one of her repertoire of surprised looks. It was daylight, and that was like noon to her. “Of course there’s no school. It’s Armistice Day.”

  People took Armistice Day seriously back then, nineteen years after the end of the Great War. In Chicago everything stopped at eleven o’clock, even the street-cars. People stood for a minute of silence, remembering.

  “And the turkey shoot,” Grandma said.

  I knew they had a turkey shoot on Armistice Day down here. Posters were up in Moore’s Store and Weidenbach’s bank.

  An awful thought struck me. A turkey shoot? What if Grandma took part? I remembered Grandpa Dowdel’s old twelve-gauge double-barreled Winchester behind the woodbox.

  Grandma read my mind. She was turning bacon and waved me away with the fork. “If I took out after an old turkey with that twelve-gauge, I’d blow him apart. There’d be nothin’ left but wattle and shot.”

  The terrible picture of an exploding turkey raining feathers hung in my mind. But Grandma said, “It’s not like that. They use air rifles and buy chances to shoot at paper cutouts. They don’t shoot real turkeys. What would you do with a plugged turkey this far ahead of Thanksgiving?”

  You could keep it upstairs in my bedroom where it would stay frozen. But I didn’t say so.

  “Besides, I don’t compete.” Grandma pursed her lips, ladylike except for the toothpick. “It’s the men and the boys. You know how they love an excuse to make a clatter and show off.”

  A turkey shoot was bound to be outdoors, and my nose was just now thawing. “Then why are we going?” I asked, hopeless.

  “For the burgoo,” Grandma explained.

  And I didn’t even ask.

  The Armistice Day turkey shoot was held on the Abernathy farm. Grandma and I went out there on shank’s ponies, meaning we walked. They’d planted next year’s wheat, and the autumn colors had faded. It was getting into the gray time of year. We tramped the road south, into the wind, until we saw horses tied to the fence posts and cars pulled off on the shoulder.

  Grandma wore Grandpa Dowdel’s old coat, and I wore his hunting jacket, and dungarees under a skirt. The longer I lived down here, the more I was starting to look like Mildred Burdick. A wool cap pulled down to my eyebrows didn’t help.

  The Abernathy farm looked long abandoned, though people milled around it. Out in a field they’d set up frames with orange paper targets more or less shaped like turkeys. And there was a gun rack. Since the turkey shoot was for charity, men in little caps were selling chances. They were the American Legion, veterans of the Great War.

  The barn was in bad shape. And the house hadn’t seen a lick of paint this century. All the ladies were clustered on the back porch.

  “Does anybody live here?” I asked Grandma.

  “Abernathys,” she said, swinging wide the gate and marching up the walk. “That’s Mrs. Abernathy in the door.”

  The other ladies clustered around a table on the porch beside a rusting cream separator. Mrs. Abernathy stood by, holding her elbows and looking down. She was a forlorn lady with a sweater pulled over her apron.

  In the yard a big pot hung from a tripod over a crackling fire. It was the burgoo—a stew made with whatever you had on hand. White meat and red meat and maybe squirrel. Any old vegetable, heavy on the turnips. Potato wedges for body, stewed tomatoes for color, onions to taste. It was served at every outdoor event, from an auction to a hanging, as Grandma would say.

  A small lady in a headscarf under an army cap stirred the burgoo with a wooden paddle. Grandma veered off the walk and took the paddle out of her hand. “I’ll spell you, Wilma. Go for more kindling,” she said, and the small lady fell back. The whole porch was watching.

  I wanted to put some distance between me and Grandma, so I drifted out of the yard and down to the barn lot, where the crack and pop of air rifles rent the air.

  Men and boys were ranked along the firing line before each distant turkey target. I didn’t recognize any of them, but then they were all in caps with earflaps. They took their shooting seriously, but man and boy, they either weren’t crack shots, or those paper turkeys were harder to hit than they looked. Both the barn and the shed were taking a pelting.

  The American Legionnaires were handing over the rifles and reloading, and I must have been standing too close. A Legionnaire handed me a rifle, and I took it. At the touch of cold steel, I froze. From the way I was dressed, did he think I was a boy? Had he missed the skirt over my dungarees? This might have given Annie Oakley her big chance, but I was embarrassed to death. I couldn’t wait to get rid of that rifle. I handed it off to the shooter next to me.

  It was Augie Fluke, with his flaps down.

  Ever since Grandma had glued his head, Augie had never looked me in the eye. He was a skulker by nature anyway. Now he blinked at the sight of me. But his eyes narrowed, and I read his mind. He was going to show me a thing or two about marksmanship. He knew my grandma was a dead shot, but she was a mere woman. Did I read all this in Augie’s squint? If you’re going to read minds, start with a simple one.

  He jammed the butt of the rifle into one of his sloping shoulders. His tongue lolled out as he sighted down the barrel and took considered aim.

  Then, as bad luck would have it, a scared rabbit, a big cottontail, darted from under the barn and across the front of the targets. Seeing live prey blurred Augie’s judgment. Forgetting the paper target, he swung his rifle around to follow the rabbit. He swung too far. A big black car, a Buick, I think, was parked on the sideline. Just as the rabbit disappeared under it, Augie fired. The crowd looked at the car. In the silence you could hear a hiss as the back tire, a white sidewall, began to go flat.

  A Legionnaire howled and threw his cap on the ground. He must have been the head Legionnaire, because the cap had medals pinned on it. “Dag nab it! That was a new tire! Who done that?”

  Augie went rigid and thought about thrusting the rifle back into my hands. Then he flung it down and plunged headlong into the crowd. They made way for him, whooping and clapping and pretending to duck. He vaulted a fence and hit the road running, back to town. So a turkey shoot wasn’t as boring as I’d expected, quite. But I went on watching from up in the yard.

  They shot some more. Then the head Legionnaire threw up his arm. “Troopers, hold your fire! It’s pretty nearly eleven o’clock.”

  Silence fell. Some in the crowd took out their watches to make sure. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the moment when the armistice of the Great War had been signed in 1918. We all turned to face east as people did, toward France.

  I turned to see a back view of Grandma. Her left hand was outstretched, holding the paddle upright in the burgoo. Her right hand must have been over her heart. Her old hat was pulled low and pinned tight, and her hair was escaping. I never saw her shoulders straighter.

  The ladies on the porch stood facing a blank wall because it was east. Mrs. Abernathy had turned in the door. An utter stillness measured a minute, with only the crying wind and the rattle of a dry creeper growing up the side of the Abernathy house.

  Just then, did I see a face in a dormer window upstairs? I might have. I wasn’t sure.

  Then the head Legionnaire boomed out, “Gentlemen, lock and load!” The firing began again, like popping corn.


  At lunchtime a bucket brigade of ladies in Legionnaire caps brought pails of burgoo from the pot to the porch. Now Grandma was up there, planted at the end of the table. Again, she’d pushed right in.

  She threw back her coat. Underneath she wore an apron that was new to me. Though homemade, it was like the ones the hot dog sellers wore at Wrigley Field, with big square pockets in front to collect money.

  Stomping in the cold, a crowd snaked up the porch steps. The Legion Auxiliary ladies handed over steaming tin mugs of burgoo. The line edged along until they came to Grandma. A mug of burgoo was a dime.

  The first customer, a big old farmer, handed Grandma a coin. “I can’t change a quarter,” she said, dropping it into her pocket and looking straight through him.

  “That’s fifty cents for two,” the next man said. “I’ll take thirty cents in change.”

  “Haven’t got it,” Grandma replied, banking the fifty-cent piece. By now I was standing next to the porch just below her, bug-eyed to see what she was getting away with. Even I knew the next customer, Mr. L. J. Weidenbach, the banker. He was a big, sleek, slack-mouthed man as tight with money as Grandma herself.

  He didn’t wear a Legion cap. He may have been too old for the war. Anyway, he’d stayed home and made money. He held out a very thin dime.

  Grandma looked at that dime like she’d never seen one. Her eyes were circles of astonishment. “That won’t do it, L.J.,” she said, loud. Mr. Weidenbach winced. The porch sagged with customers of his bank.

  “What do you want from me, Mrs. Dowdel?” he muttered.

  “From you I wouldn’t say no to a five-dollar bill,” Grandma said, louder than before. “If you can get the bootlace loose from around your wallet. The boys who fought at the front didn’t count the cost.”

  The crowd behind him murmured. The Auxiliary ladies serving at the table stood tall and together. Their men had fought, many at the front.

  The thought of five dollars for a cup of cooling burgoo made Mr. Weidenbach’s eyes water. The line jostled him from behind, everybody all ears. He jammed two thorny fingers into his watch pocket and came up with a silver dollar, as high as he’d go. Grandma held wide her apron pocket for the banker to make his deposit. “Who’s next?” she said as he stalked off the porch.

  In short, she got more than a dime off everybody, except from those she knew couldn’t pay more. In some cases she could make change, in others she couldn’t. Once, I saw her palm the dime back into the hand that offered it.

  A few people dropped out of the line when word reached them that Grandma was cashier. But it was burgoo or nothing. When the last customer settled up, Grandma had a pouch on her like a kangaroo.

  Gloating was beneath her. But the toothpick in her mouth moved in a jaunty way, like a tiny baton conducting a small symphony. She helped herself to burgoo. When she noticed me, she handed me down a mug. It wasn’t too bad, if you’d worked up an appetite.

  Down the table, the Legion Auxiliary ladies drew into a knot, to confer. Then their leader advanced upon Grandma. By the name on her cap, she was Mrs. W. T. Sheets. Her medals jangled importantly.

  Grandma observed her approach. “Mrs. Dowdel,” said Mrs. Sheets, “I’m here to tell you that you’re twice as bald-faced and brazen and, yes, I have to say shameless as the rest of us girls put together. In the presence of these witnesses I’m on record for saying you outdo the most two-faced, two-fisted shortchanger, flimflam artist, and full-time extortionist anybody ever saw working this part of the country. And all I have to say is, God bless you for your good work.”

  With a small turn of hand, Grandma waved Mrs. Sheets away. Mrs. Sheets remained at her post. “Mrs. Dowdel,” she went on, “you’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Well, it’s common knowledge, isn’t it? But we girls would be proud as Punch to have you join our Auxiliary if you’re a veteran’s wife. Did your late husband go to war?”

  “Only with me,” Grandma said, “and he lost every time.”

  I stood in the yard, clutching my tin mug. The knitted cap cut a groove in my forehead. My feet were blocks of ice. Grandpa Dowdel’s hunting jacket smelled like dead ducks. But I’d never seen Grandma near this much money. I couldn’t blink till I saw what she was going to do with it.

  The Auxiliary ladies were collapsing the table and carrying their dirty mugs inside. Grandma followed them into the house, and I followed Grandma.

  Mrs. Abernathy’s kitchen made Grandma’s look like the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The floor sloped. A pump stood over the sink and a coal oil lamp hung above the table.

  Clanking loose change, Grandma looked on as the Auxiliary ladies went to work, dipping water out of the reservoir to wash the mugs. They poured the leftover burgoo into quart jars to leave with Mrs. Abernathy. They worked like beavers, drying the cups and boxing them up for next time. They wiped down the kitchen, leaving it cleaner than they’d found it.

  All the while, Mrs. Abernathy stood in the corner, as if it wasn’t her kitchen at all. She was so thin, you could almost see through her, and her eyes were vacant. She looked tired to death.

  Then the other ladies were gone. It was just Grandma and me and ghostly Mrs. Abernathy in the dim kitchen. Something was about to happen, and I didn’t know what.

  In the flickering light Grandma spilled all the change onto the tabletop. It rolled and glittered. Grandma fished to find L. J. Weidenbach’s silver dollar. She held it up in triumph.

  Mrs. Abernathy stood at her elbow. The lamplight found all the hollows in her cheeks. At the sight of all that money, she brought her hands up to her face. “Oh mercy,” she said in a husky voice. “In all the years before, it was never better than twelve dollars.”

  Grandma nodded knowingly. “Them Auxiliary gals mean well, but they’re not enterprising. Burgoo for a dime.” Grandma shrugged at the thought. Then, a little shyly, she said, “Will it see you through till next year?”

  “It looks like riches to me,” Mrs. Abernathy murmured. “And it’ll have to see us through.”

  Grandma got busy. “We better bank all this money in coffee cans for safekeeping.”

  Mrs. Abernathy went for the cans. They scooped together, feeling all that metal money playing through their fingers, hearing its crash in the cans. “Shall we count it?” Grandma wondered.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Abernathy said, quick. “It’d scare me to know how much.”

  I thought I knew everything then. The veterans ran their turkey shoot to raise money for the American Legion. Their wives sold burgoo to help Mrs. Abernathy.

  It was time to leave. She couldn’t hide her coffee cans as long as we were there. But Grandma said, “How is he?”

  Mrs. Abernathy looked aside, into the shadows. “He don’t change much. Will you step up to see him? He won’t know. But we don’t get company, and it’s quiet after the turkey shoot.”

  Mrs. Abernathy took notice of me for the first time. “I don’t know if you want the girl to—”

  “She can take it,” Grandma said.

  So I knew that whatever it was, I’d have to.

  I followed behind them up the stairs, numb with not knowing. It was so low-ceilinged up there that Grandma had to duck. Mrs. Abernathy pushed open a door, and I smelled ointment and a sickroom.

  It was under the slant of the roof. A wheelchair, an old-time one with three wheels and a wicker back, stood by the dormer window. He was sitting in it. Mrs. Abernathy’s son.

  She’d tied him into the chair with flannel strips, and his head was fallen back. His face was slick and raw, and his jaw hung open. He was far thinner than his mother, and his arms hung useless down the sides of the chair. When Mrs. Abernathy touched his shoulder, he turned toward her. Then you could tell he was blind. He turned his head away.

  Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say. Grandma and Mrs. Abernathy stood together for a minute—a minute like the morning. Then we left.

  We went in a hurry past the coffee cans on the kitchen table because Grandma didn’t
want thanks. Outside, I was surprised it was still daylight, surprised the world was still there.

  The turkey shoot was over and the crowds gone. Down in the barn lot Mrs. W. T. Sheets sat in the big Buick, up on a jack. Mr. Sheets hunkered by the back fender. He was having trouble changing the wheel, and his spare looked low. The air was blue around him.

  Grandma and I turned out of the gate and along the road, back to town. She set her mouth against the wind. It had turned, so we were walking into it again. And there was some winter in the wind. She tramped along, listening so intently to the quiet that I said, “Grandma, tell me.”

  “Her boy was gassed in the trenches,” Grandma said. “And shot up.”

  We went on, the town rising on the horizon.

  “He gets a check from the government, but it don’t keep them.”

  “But, Grandma, aren’t there veterans’ hospitals where he could go?”

  “She won’t give him up,” Grandma said. “She’s lost him once already.”

  We walked a narrow stretch between the road and the ditch, single file. Then just above the sighing wind she said, “The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.”

  Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy’s son could have been my dad.

  It was farther coming back than going. Counting fence posts made it longer. Finally we were in town, walking under bare branches. Grandma was putting the day behind her. You could see it in her stride. We turned at the business block, past Weidenbach’s bank.

  Something brought Grandma up short in front of Moore’s Store. Under the turkey shoot posters was a display of Sweetheart soap. She stopped dead, though she made her own soap. Beside the display was a big picture of Kate Smith, the Songbird of the South, hand-colored. She leaned out of the frame, smiling broadly. In her hand was a cake of soap. Below was her testimonial:I start each day with a song in my heart,